


Back Again

by AuleValar



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: CaptainCanary, F/M, Leonard Snart Lives, Mutual Pining, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:22:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24409501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuleValar/pseuds/AuleValar
Summary: Leonard Snart is back, and with a vengeful Damien Darhk on their trail and a metric-ton of temporal energy running through his veins, he probably has bigger problems to worry about than his messed up love life.Good thing he's never really had his priorities straight.In which, Leonard returns, Sara doesn't want to be hurt anymore, and everybody else can't believe the two of them could be so dense.Set Post Season 3, if Damien hadn't switched places with Nora.
Relationships: Sara Lance/Leonard Snart
Comments: 70
Kudos: 86





	1. All the Stabbing and the Punching is Not Cute

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. 
> 
> I think I'm 5 years late to this party, but I have just binged Legends of Tomorrow during Quarantine and am very bitter they decided to kill off Leonard Snart in Season 1 (no offense to Ava, of course). 
> 
> So here we are. Enjoy.

" _Okay Sara, I think you're getting closer. The energy reading I'm getting off your sensor is starting to go up,"_ Zari's voice scratches in her ear.

Sara feels her fingers itch for a knife as she creeps silently through the dark halls of the 1986 Russian hospital she's found herself in. The night seems quiet and still, maybe even a little peaceful. The only sound in the air is is the soft padding of her own feet treading lightly across the tile floor.

Everything _seems_ fine.

But still, Sara feels the hairs on her arms sticking up, and can't shake the ominous feeling in her chest that something is about to go horribly wrong.

When Nate had asked her this morning about 1986 Russia, she'd lied to him.

It'd been an honest kind of lie, really more of an omission than anything else, but a lie nonetheless. It was simple, see. She'd told him they'd never been here before. That this place was just like any other place to her. And technically, they _hadn't_ been here before - when the Legends had first made a pitstop in Russia, it'd been in November. Now it was December.

Later, Sara was probably going to have to answer to the team for that. It was such a stupid thing to be lying about, but Sara hadn't been able to help herself. If she'd told the truth, they would've wanted the war story. And today, the war story hurt.

If she closes her eyes, she can practically still feel the rifle in her hand, with the scope focused on Stein. A taunting voice in her ear... telling her not to do it.

God, Sara thinks, her heart stuttering a little in her chest as her mind dwells on the thought for too long. That felt like five lifetimes ago. She shakes her head.

Feelings in a box she reminds herself, banishing the memories as quickly as they surfaced.

She's just glad the team hadn't questioned her when she insisted on doing this reconnaissance alone. Sara needed the action to help clear her head.

" _Should be two doors on the left. That's where the energy reading is coming from,"_ Zari comes over the comms again.

Sara nods, carefully pushing the door open and creeping inside. She finds herself in a patient room, and almost immediately alarms are triggering in her mind. There's a bed against the far wall, sheets ruffled, but no inhabitant. A cup is rolling around on the counter, water draining from its lip and dripping onto the floor. Pills lie scattered beside it.

Someone's clearly being treated in here.

Where are they now?

Something creaks off to her left, and Sara reacts immediately.

She slams the door back, knocking into something. No _someone._ Large and solid. They let out a surprised grunt, and Sara spins, fist grabbing the dark blue jacket that's hanging on their shoulders, knife gleaming in her hand. Her foot collides with the inside of their knee, and they pitch forward, head snapping up to look at her.

Blue eyes burn on his face, wild, startled, and... a little unfocused.

Sara feels her heart jump into her throat.

No, she thinks. Not again. She can't keep doing this over and over.

"Leonard?" she hisses, jamming the knife right up against his throat.

Every fiber of her being thrums with aggression.

She hones in immediately on the grey scraggly beard growing on his chin, the grimy smear of dirt that layers his cheek, and the ripped patches in his parka. Even though she's clearly threatening him, it hasn't seemed to register.

In the past three years, since she first met him, Sara does not think she's seen any version of Leonard look so unkempt.

Her mind tries to go to the first obvious explanation... but no. They'd dropped Leo off months ago - he'd been going back to Earth X, and had _promised_ he'd call if he was ever back in the neighborhood. He had no business being in 1986 Russia, alone, without warning them first.

So then who was this?

She presses the knife closer to his throat, watching as a small trickle of red starts to leak down his neck. Proving, if nothing else, that the man in front of her is at least a living human...

Then something changes in his face. Leonard blinks, and he sees her. Actually sees her. Some - though not all- of the wild blankness that had settled in his features fades away.

"Jesus, Sara?" he says, looking at her suddenly aghast. Then... "Is that a knife in your hand or are you just happy to see me?"

Sara feels a whimper of shock escape her throat. Because that statement is just so incredibly, purely, exactly Leonard. And not just any Leonard. Their Leonard. Her Leonard.

" _Sara? Did you just say Leonard? Do you need backup?_ " Zari asks in her ear.

Sara ignores her, quickly trying to swallow the flash of hope that has electrified her. Dead, she reminds herself. Leonard is dead.

"Is this Damien Dahrk's idea?" Sara snarls. "Does he think this is some kind of sick joke? Payback for Nora?"

Leonard's jaw drops, and he raises both hands slowly in surrender. "Not sure what you're talking about Sara," he says. "Just... it's me... The Oculus exploded, and then I was just here. In Russia somewhere... I think."

He squeezes his eyes shut. Something dark flashes across his face, but it passes quickly.

"Everyone knows the Oculus exploded," Sara growls, furious that Damien Dahrk is playing with her emotions like this. Furious that somebody has dared dangle him in front of her again - especially when her breakup with Ava is still so fresh. "Prove it some other way. Tell me something only Leonard would know."

Snart's lip quirks, and a touch of the wildness returns. "You're kidding me," he says. She presses the knife a little deeper, making it abundantly clear that she is not. "What? Gonna kill me with your hands Lance? You're gonna look me in the eye when you do it?" he asks, voice incredulous. Her mind wheels back to the trigger, to Russia the first time over, to Stein in her sniper's line of sight. "I don't think so. You're not the cold bastard you used to be anymore either."

Her hands shake a little, and she brings the knife down.

"It's you," she says, gaping, and when his hand gently wraps around her wrist - the one that's got the knife in it - she very carefully, doesn't flinch.

"Who the hell else would I be?" he asks.

Sara lets out a huff that makes her feel like she's going insane.

" _Sara? Report in? Do you need backup?"_

Sara reaches up and presses her hand to her ear. "Reporting in," she says, feeling her voice shake. "We... no back up needed. Coming back with the Fugitive."

"Fugitive?" Snart says, raising an eyebrow and pausing. "That me?" Of course, of all the things she's said so far, the word fugitive seems to have alarmed him the most.

Sara shakes her head. "Not now... I promise I'm not arresting you. Come on. We'll talk on the ship." When Leonard doesn't move, she gently, carefully, covers the back of the hand he has still wrapped around her wrist with her own. Sara looks him in the face, and lets herself feel shattered for just another moment. "Please Leonard. On the ship. We'll talk. I promise."

Snart gives her a slow nod, and with that the two of them are off.

* * *

Mick is in a bad mood.

A bad mood that's worse than his usual, natural state of bad mood.

He's been in one since they landed in Russia 1986, and Ray had started preening incessantly about the good old days.

"They tortured the shit out of you Haircut. Don't look so happy," he growls, taking another long swig of his beer.

It's his fifth one since lunch - the stash they keep in the mini-fridge of the Captain's Office is starting to run low. If Sara takes too much longer, Mick is going to have to move to find more. She better hurry up, he thinks, because the minute he vacates his spot on the steps to go get more beer, he's not going to come back.

Fugitive or no fugitive.

"Aw, but then you saved my life," Ray protests. "That was the mission when we became friends."

"I can't believe Sara didn't mention you all have been here before when we were talking about it this morning," Nate frowns, cutting off the unfriendly retort Mick has ready for Ray.

John Constantine shrugs dramatically, throwing his head back against the back of his chair. No, _Mick's_ chair. The reason Mick has had to take residence on the stairs is because Constantine has stolen it again. He's almost certain the only reason Constantine is still sitting with them all is just so Mick can't have it back.

"Maybe Sara dearest got tortured here too. Doesn't want to talk about it," he says, waving a hand in the air and rolling his eyes. His tone seems to imply more that Constantine is the one who doesn't want to talk about it.

"Nope, that was just Haircut," Mick says. He takes another drink.

"She did almost shoot Stein though," Ray adds thoughtfully. Nate immediately looks at him with a disgruntled frown. "What? I mean, she didn't actually do it. I think it was Snart who-"

He doesn't get to finish his thought, as Zari swings around the corner suddenly to join them in the Captain's Office. Her arms are folded across her chest, and her mouth is set in slight frown. "Sara's on her way back," she announces. "Says she's got the Fugitive and everything."

"About time," Mick grunts, glowering at the dwindling beer stash.

"No way? She got it?" Nate blinks in surprise. "She didn't even leave any action for the rest of us."

Constantine's head jerks up. "What the hell was it? There's no way Sara captured a level ten fugitive without our backup."

"You know, things got done before you showed up," Zari shoots him an annoyed look, but her eyes flicker over towards Mick as she chastises Constantine.

She notably did not answer the question.

Mick's eyes narrow, "Spit it out."

"She didn't say what it was," Zari says, slowly. "But when she found it, I did hear her say a, uh, familiar name."

"That's impossible," Ray frowns, sharing a concerned glance with Nate.

"Yeah, I mean other than the secret prison break that the original Legends were running..." Nate agrees quickly.

Ray sits up straighter. "Unless..."

"Damien Dahrk..." Nate nods. The level of alarm on both of their faces grows wildly.

"No, no. She didn't see Damien Dahrk," Zari says quickly, shutting that down before the two of them started running for weapons or doing something equally stupid.

"Who'd she see?" Mick asks again, and this time, he pushes himself to his feet, standing up so he can glare at her from above instead of below. He doesn't like the worried look she's still giving him. He's been with the Legends long enough that he can spot the 'hopefully-this-doesn't-make-Mick-burn-the-ship-down' expression from a mile away.

Mick _hates_ it when they look at him like that.

Especially because usually they're right. Any words that follow _The Look_ do make him want to murder the shit out of someone, or multiple someones.

Zari doesn't get to answer him. She opens her mouth to respond, and they're interrupted instead.

"Long time no see, friends," a drawling sarcastic voice drifts in from the Bridge.

And all heads snap up at the same time.

Mick feels his mouth go dry.

Two figures are standing in the doorway.

One, of course, is Sara. Though, she doesn't look one bit like someone coming back from a successful mission should. Everything about her - the tight set of her shoulders, the down-turned corners of her mouth, the clenched fists - seems strained. Her eyes are not looking at the rest of the team, and instead seem to be pinned intensely on the man standing next to her.

Leonard Snart.

Or someone who looks quite a bit like him.

He's not exactly as Mick remembers. He's got a grungy wild thing going for him, that Mick's city-boy Leonard would've scoffed at. Not to mention the overgrown beard that's taken residence on his chin. But still... it's the eyes that make him. The first thing Leonard does when stepping in the room is hone in on Mick, and Mick takes one look back and just _knows_.

He feels the beer slip from his fingers and shatter on the floor.

"Leo?" Constantine says with a cheery smirk. "You dump the boyfriend?"

Leonard's eyes flicker away from his partner and narrow. He shoots John a cold appraising look, eyes roaming over the Brit like he's a total stranger.

Mick still feels frozen.

"Leo would've called if he was visiting," Ray mutters, when nobody else speaks. He starts to take a few steps forward. "Sara, it's not..."

"You're real this time? Everyone else sees him too?" Mick interrupts, very loudly. Ray stops moving.

Leonard seems to take that as his cue to break the tension in the room. "Yes, hello Mick, I'm the real deal," he says with a humorless smirk, sauntering through the doorway. "Now will somebody" - he cocks his head back and looks pointedly at Sara, who is still watching him like he might suddenly combust - "please explain to me what _this_ time means, and why Sherlock Holmes here thinks he can call me _Leo_?"

Mick feels himself unfreeze, and he walks evenly towards Snart.

Leonard, oozing with his own personal brand of sharp, sinister caution, watches Mick come. He seems relaxed enough. More relaxed than anybody else - save maybe Sara - would've been, if they found themselves with a three hundred pound serial arsonist thumping towards them.

Mick stops right in front of Snart.

"Mick-" Leonard starts to say, a tone of warning in his voice.

Like he knows.

Then Mick punches him. One, clean fist right to the jaw, and Snart buckles to the ground like a bag of rocks thrown off a cliff.

* * *

"MICK!" Half the room yells all at once, as Leonard feels his vision swimming.

Mick is still standing just above him, staring at him like he's utterly shocked his fist has connected with something solid.

Leonard lets out a pained groan, his hand flying up to his throbbing jaw to feel the bruise he knows is already blooming there. His fingers come back bloody. A split lip, he thinks.

He'd seen the punch coming - Mick had his tells.

But still.

What the actual fuck?

Ray's face appears above him then, blocking Mick's. The boy-scout's eyebrows are knitted together with unabashed concern. "Leonard?" he asks cautiously.

"Hello Raymond," Leonard says, voice coming out in a strangled kind of growl, a leftover reaction from getting sucker punched moments ago.

Ray grins. "It is you," he says, looking excitedly up at the rest of the group.

"Glad to see I've met _your_ burden of proof," Leonard groans, pushing himself up on his elbows. He swats at Ray's hand as the scientist moves to start probing his blooming wounds. "You know, all the stabbing and the punching is not cute."

His eyes flicker up to Mick and Sara. His closest friend in the world, and... well, whatever Sara is to him. But they aren't even paying attention to his jabs. Sara has made her way over to Mick, and is muttering something to him in low tones. Leonard doesn't understand why the two of them are looking at him the way they are. Sure, when he'd woken up after the Oculus, he'd known it'd probably be a shock to them, to find him still alive and kicking.

Hell, he'd been surprised enough for the whole lot of them. But here he was. Not dead. He thought, at the very least, they'd be little bit more relieved.

Leonard's eyes track back to Ray, who is now babbling at the other three - the strangers Leonard doesn't recognize.

"- be impossible," Ray is saying. "The Oculus -"

"Didn't blow me up, yes," Leonard interrupts, not bothering to hide his annoyance anymore. "What? Why are you all looking at me like that?" He pushes himself up, glancing again at Sara, at the way she's still clearly got her guard up.

His stomach twists a little, as the kiss flashes back into his mind, unbidden, the way it has ever few minutes since she'd found him.

"We're on the ship now. Explain," he demands. She'd promised him she would.

"Leonard," she says quietly, and his heart skips a beat at the way she says his name. At least she's not treating him like the enemy anymore. He can still feel the sting of her knife digging into his neck. "How... how long ago did the Oculus blow up for you?"

"I don't know," he shrugs, mind wheeling back.

Everything is a little blurry for him. He remembers waking up in a warehouse, his limbs feeling achy and weak. He remembers stalking streets at night, hearing people talk in a language he didn't understand, and digging through trash cans for newspapers. Leonard is not positive, if and when he ate last, though he does remember punching some street vendor and making off with a few bottles of water. Then there's the hospital...

How did he end up there?

His mind feels suddenly like a swamp. Some parts of it are lucid and he remembers clearly. Other parts are obscured under murky green water beyond his reach.

"Three weeks, maybe?" he guesses finally, when he feels Ray's hand on his shoulder. He swats at the boy-scout again. Leonard already feels quite out of his depth, and to allow Raymond to coddle him would be to admit to it. Yeah, absolutely not. "How long has it been for you all?" he sighs. Because three weeks, clearly, is not what they've experienced.

"Been two years Snart," Mick grunts. Leonard feels his jaw lock.

Two years? Damn. Well, maybe that explained it.

Mick, silently, reaches down and offers him a hand. Leonard takes it, the sucker punch already forgotten, and grasps Mick's shoulder to steady himself for a moment when he's back on his feet. His head is spinning.

He looks again at the three strangers in the room, and everything starts to click. They're all still hovering by the entrance to the Captain's Office, looking like they're unsure whether they should be around for this particular reunion. One of them - the prissy looking one giving off strong Captain America vibes- is frowning at him like Leonard once killed his cat.

"Where's Rip?" Leonard asks slowly.

"Demon got him," Mick says. "Blondie's captain now."

Leonard swallows, looking again towards Sara. Captain, huh? Her expression is unreadable.

"Savage?"

"Dead. We ended up exposing him to a radio-active comet and killed him three times," Ray supplies. Leonard pauses, considering pressing him for more questions on that one, before deciding that it doesn't really matter.

"... Kendra?"

"Retired, living with Carter in 2018," Sara says.

"The Professor?"

"Fucking Nazi's," Mick mumbles, shaking his head.

"Shit..." and then he almost can't bring himself to ask the next one. If Stein is dead... "Jackson?"

"Needed a break, after..." Sara's voice trails off and she waves her hand by way of explanation. "Married now. He's got a kid."

Leonard can suddenly see it. The grief. He doesn't know how he didn't place it before, when she had him backed against the wall with a knife on his throat. She was looking at _him_ with a similar jagged edge of pain as she had when talking about Stein and Rip.

The kiss flashes in Leonard's mind's eye again. And this time the image is powerful and crisp and overwhelming. The edges of the memory are tinged with green. He grimaces at it, shutting his eyes briefly as it burns through him.

Not now, he thinks.

"Hate to break up the reunion," one of the newbies say, stepping forward. Her hand is hovering over a red pendent that's hanging around her neck. "But he just had a power surge. A big one..." She turns her head and looks at blonde man who had called him Leo. "Did you feel it too?"

"Aye. It was only a flash. Here and then gone."

Leonard glances at Mick, who grunts. "New Girl, Pretty, Trench Coat," he mutters under his breath, pointing at them each in turn. Leonard nods, even though Mick's nicknames are largely unhelpful.

The woman rolls her eyes. "Zari, Nate, and John," she clarifies.

"Oh you can call me whatever get's your rocks off," the British one, Trench Coat, winks. Leonard once again doesn't honor him with a response.

"We probably should get you to the Med Bay anyway, since we found you in a hospital... and Mick punched you," Sara sighs. She's still looking at him like she's seen a ghost. "Gideon can scan you for magic there."

"Magic?" Leonard's face twists.

"Whoa, wait, should we be doing this? Giving him the run of the ship like that?" Nate cuts off the answer.

Leonard raises an eyebrow at him, a surge of annoyance washing through him. Who the hell pissed in this guy's cheerios? Leonard has got half a mind to issue a good old-fashioned threat. It's hitting him, slowly, that half the team he'd left behind is gone. That he's missed things. Important things. It only feels right to channel some of his nerves towards a good impression on the new kids. Especially when they seem to have already jumped to conclusions about him anyway...

Carefully, Leonard crosses his arms, tilts his head to the side so that Nate - likely short for Nathaniel, he thinks - has good line of sight on his bloody lip and swelling jaw, and... Sara appears suddenly at his side. The words halt on the tip of his tongue the moment she's in his peripheries. He realizes that he's sandwiched between them - Sara on his left and Mick on his right. It makes his gut settle, just a little.

Out of the goodness of his heart, he doesn't threaten Nathaniel.

"Gideon will confirm, but yeah, as long as this is our Leonard. We are going to give him run of the ship," Sara says, voice firmer and more commanding than it has been all night. Her anger seems to be back - the anger he'd glimpsed when she'd started yelling at him about Damien Dahrk earlier, whoever the fuck that was.

"Yeah well that other Snart from the Legion was also your Leonard, and look what that guy did," Nate says, teeth gnashing a little. "I mean come on. We all saw him kill future Mick, and they said he shot Amaya- "

"That wasn't him," Sara replies hotly. Leonard glances down. Sara's fist has moved to wrap around the sleeve of his tattered Parka.

He isn't really following the conversation they're having right now, and part of him is once again leaning towards starting a fight. But he holds himself back. After all, Sara is grabbing him like he belongs to her, and she has already tried to murder him once today.

"You," Sara snaps suddenly, giving his sleeve a good pull. "Medbay. Now."

"Yes Captain," Leonard says.

And if a flash of pain crosses Sara's face, the two of them both carefully ignore it.


	2. Superpowers 101...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quarantine is treating me well. Nothing to do other than write. Happy Chapter 2!

When Leonard asks to clean himself up first before the team turns him into their newest science fair project, Sara agrees. The fact that he probably could've asked for the moon in that moment and she would've given it to him, is beside the point.

She is still kind of expecting for this to end at any moment. Sara's always been a light sleeper. All it will take is a little bit of time turbulence and she'll be awake again in her bed, and Leonard will be gone.

Although, she _does_ have to admit, this dream is getting pretty strange. On the off nights, when dreams of Leonard don't involve the Oculus exploding, he typically is with her as he was. They play cards, and he cracks a few jokes. Maybe they start a bar fight. The fact that she found him shedding alarming levels of potentially magical energy emissions in a Russian hospital is pushing the bounds of even her fairly creative imagination.

Sara has yet to decide whether that's a good sign or not.

Leonard doesn't take long to return to the Medbay, which is probably a testament to how badly he wants answers from them. Lord knows, he could take five years getting ready in the bathroom if left to his own devices.

Sara's breath hitches in her throat when she sees him strutting towards her down the hall.

 _This_ is Leonard.

The beard is completely gone, and with Leonard's sharp jawline back on display, the bruise Mick gave him earlier looks all the more menacing. He's also disposed of the destroyed parka. Gideon has replaced it with a simple long sleeve black sweater and a pair of matching black skinny jeans.

Sara immediately regrets allowing him to clean up. It's so much harder to look at him now that he's undeniably himself.

Mick, at least, seems happy.

"Aha, you look like you again Snart," he nods in approval.

"I aim to please," Leonard shrugs, rubbing a hand absently over his bare chin. His eyes flicker over to Sara, and she realizes too late that she's staring at him. His expression becomes smug almost instantly.

She shakes her head, forcibly pulling her thoughts far, far away from the destination they'd been heading.

"Come on," she says, with a heavy scoop of false confidence. "Let's get this over with."

Then Sara turns away and walks into the Medbay to join the rest of the team, who are already in there waiting. She does not see his smirk drop from his face and shift into a thoughtful frown.

Leonard glides into the room after her and slips into the patient chair that's closest to the door. Mick follows him in like a silent shadow, procuring a fresh beer from seemingly nowhere when he turns the corner, and plops heavily down beside him. Sara has the distinct feeling that if anybody asks Mick to move, the bottle will be promptly weaponized.

The others all stir at their arrival.

Constantine is nursing a flask by the door. Nate is next to Zari by the unused patient chair, but quickly moves further into the room to make space for Sara and Mick when the area starts to become crowded.

And Ray stands on Leonard's other side, fiddling with some of the medical tech.

Ray, bless him, had enthusiastically volunteered to lead the diagnostics while Snart had been changing, and Sara had jumped on the opportunity to hand off the responsibility. She wants, no _needs_ , to be distanced from him just in case Gideon tells them something she doesn't want to hear. Of course, that's hard considering that Leonard keeps glancing at her like he implicitly expects her to be in his orbit.

She doesn't blame him for it. After all, that's what it had been like before.

With-holding a sigh, Sara compromises for the time being and settles next to Zari in the spot that Nate had just vacated. It's not as far away as she could be - if left to her own devices she'd probably have ended up either by Constantine and the door or Nate's new spot in the back corner - but she's not stubbornly claiming space in Leonard's personal bubble either like Mick and Ray.

For now, it's good enough.

Leonard, of course, looks predictably sour about the situation when he realizes that Palmer is about to start playing doctor. Then again, Sara thinks Leonard would be pouting no matter who was about to start prodding him. As much as he loves attention, she knows he hates this specific brand of it.

If Sara were in a betting mood, she'd probably put big money that Leonard would be violent by the end of this.

"Alrighty then," Ray says cheerfully when he's ready to start. He rubs his hands together and he claps Leonard once on the shoulder. "Let's get you all strapped up."

Leonard glares at him. "Raymond, if you touch my shoulder one more time today, you are going to loose your hand."

Yep, there it is, Captain Cold's signature charm. They are off to a great start.

"It's really good to have you back Len. We've missed you," Ray grins like a cheshire cat, despite threat of dismemberment. Then he pulls the blue IV tube from the arm of the chair, and starts to hook Leonard up to Gideon.

Snart remarkably bears it with only a small scowl and little bit of glowering.

Beside her, Sara hears it when Zari huffs, glancing between Leonard and Ray with more than a touch of incredulity. "Yes, I got affection out of that too, Ray" she mutters sarcastically, too quiet for anybody else but Sara to hear.

Sara's heart squeezes.

"That's Mick Rory's best friend in the world," Sara breaths, unable to keep the fondness out of the statement. "What'd you expect him to be like?"

Zari's eyes flicker over to her.

"Uh. Huh," she lifts a dubious eyebrow at Sara.

Ah.

No.

Sara regrets speaking.

Quickly, she focuses back on Ray, who has finished with some of the initial health scans - Leonard's blood pressure, heart rate, and body temperature are all apparently normal. They're clearly about ready to start getting into the important stuff.

"Okay Gideon," Sara speaks up, switching into Captain mode. She can feel her palms sweating. This is the big moment of truth. "Is this our Leonard?"

"Biometric scans indicate that this is indeed Mr. Snart," Gideon's voice rings through the room.

A rattling breath passes through her. For a moment, Sara thinks this is going to be the part where she wakes up. It'd be poetic enough for him to disappear right after Gideon confirms he's real. But when she closes her eyes and opens them again, he's still there, sulking with his arms crossed in the exam chair.

"I hate to say I told you so," Leonard mutters irritably in a tone that suggests quite the opposite.

Sara thinks her heart is beating loudly enough now for the entire team to hear. Sara, Mick, Ray, Gideon - they'd verified it four different ways. Leonard is real. Here, alive, breathing, and undeniably not dead.

For the first time, she dares to allow that to sink in.

Not completely of course. If she lets it all hit her at once, she thinks she might shatter in front of the whole team like a piece of glass meeting a sledgehammer. But a little bit wouldn't hurt her.

 _Leonard is alive_ , she turns the words over in her mind. _Leonard is alive._

"Based on data from Mr. Snart's artificial hand," Gideon continues. "I estimate that he has aged about one year since he last boarded the ship."

The room pauses.

"Thought you said it'd been three weeks?" Mick asks.

Leonard's face clouds for a moment, and a shadow passes over him. He squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again, almost like his vision isn't quite clear. "It... was," he says, convincing approximately nobody.

Sara frowns. She recognizes the distant look on his face from the Russian Hospital... almost like he isn't all there...

A dumbbell drops in her gut.

Alive or not. Something is wrong here.

"Leonard, do you remember spilling water on the counter of that hospital room?" Sara asks, desperately hoping her voice is smooth.

He blinks at her. "What? No, what are you talking about?"

"Before I had the knife to your throat, what were you doing?" she breathes.

Leonard's pinky starts tapping against the arm of his chair, and his jaw ticks. There's a brief crackle of _something_ in the air around him. Almost like static in a dry room.

Zari suddenly stiffens, and the movement manages to rattle every single one of Sara's frayed assassin nerves.

"What are his power readings right now Gideon?" she asks.

"Ambient magic levels in the Medbay are unusually high. However, I do not detect anything notable coming from Mr. Snart himself."

"You sure love?" Constantine cuts in, kicking off the wall. He's been feigning drunk disinterest thus far, but this has apparently peaked his curiosity. "Cause my sixth sense is telling me otherwise."

John splays one hand out towards Leonard - like he's either getting a read on him, or ready to cast some sort of spell.

It's the wrong move.

Almost like Constantine has commanded it to do so, the crackling around Leonard get's worse.

"Positive Mr. Constantine. All scans of Mr. Snart have come back normal," Gideon answers.

Snart is no longer relaxed in the medical chair.

What started as a shadow of the look Leonard had been wearing in the hospital has evolved completely. He seems almost feral now - eyes wide, shoulders tense, wound up like a caged animal that's identified everyone around him as a threat.

The team reacts the only way it can.

Zari's hand is moving towards her necklace. Nate steps out of the corner and clenches his fists. Even Ray's happy excitement seems to have been cut off at the knees.

Sara knows she has to do something, that there's a call to make here. But she's frozen. She's not sure whether the solution is to pull a weapon or to grab Leonard's hand.

Usually her instinct is always knives first, questions later. Except... it's Leonard. Gideon had _just_ confirmed it's their Leonard.

Sara curses under her breath and feels her heart ache painfully in her chest. This was inevitable. There's always another foot to drop. Always.

Reaching for a throwing star in her belt, she's about to take action, when somebody else makes the call for her.

"Snart, you want your ring back?"

The utter randomness of Mick's question splits the tension in the room like he'd taken a cleaver to it.

The crackling stops.

Sara breathes an incredulous sigh of relief.

Mick is still in the chair beside Snart, man-spreading and drinking his beer like he doesn't give a shit what everyone else in the room is getting on about. It's classic Mick.

Leonard blinks, seeming to come back into himself. Although he is now breathing like a MMA fighter that just barely survived round one of the heavy weight championship, he seems otherwise okay.

"You still got it?" he asks. Sara thinks it's more to distract himself than actually get the ring back.

Mick scoffs and reaches up to a leather rope that's been hiding around his neck, pulling hard. There's a familiar silver piece of jewelry hanging on the end of it. When the rope snaps off, Mick drops it Leonard's outstretched palm.

Relevant or not, Snart does seem to relax a bit more once the ring slips back onto his nervous pinky.

There's a beat of silence as they all take a moment to stare and collect their thoughts. All the eyes are making Leonard look antsy again.

"Um, yeah, what was that guys?" Nate asks.

The stupor breaks.

" _That_ was disturbed ambient magic," Constantine answers. "And unless he's a bloody warlock, he shouldn't have been able to mess with it like that."

Leonard stares at Constantine, definitely tripping over the word warlock _._ "Well..." he raises one eyebrow and looks idly down at his hands. "I have no clue how I got into the hospital room."

There's another pregnant pause, and Sara can feel them all turning towards her.

God she wishes she didn't have to play captain right now.

She's not in the right state of mind to be the designated adult in the room. Somebody else should take a turn.

"Alright," she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Right. It's fine. That just means we've got a few different mysteries here. It's not like this team isn't used to a little bit of weird. We'll figure it out." Sara's not sure if she's reassuring the team or Leonard or herself. But whatever, it seems to work for them. "Maybe this was enough magic for one night though. Let's... take a break. We can keep talking about this at dinner later. Gideon, Leonard's otherwise okay to leave the Medbay right?"

"Yes Captain Lance. As I said, all scans indicate that Mr. Snart is in perfect health," she says.

Sara nods and takes one more shaky look at Leonard. He's watching her again. Frowning.

"Great, see you all in an hour," she nods.

Then Sara proceeds to make a sudden and graceless exit.

* * *

Nate does not particularly want to go to Leonard Snart's welcome home team dinner.

He knows it's a bit of a dick move to avoid someone he's never technically met because of actions Snart definitely doesn't remember, but Nate can't help it. Every time he looks at Snart, he sees the guy grinning maniacally as tries to shoot down the Wave Rider with his cold gun.

He sees a guy who shot and _murdered_ Amaya.

Okay, so maybe Nate does not actually remember that part. When they erased the Doom World, they erased their future-selves. But Nate doesn't think he needs to remember. Future-Nate had given him enough details about how badly it had sucked to watch her die, and his own imagination was plenty capable of filling in all the morbid blanks.

Hell, now that she'd gone back to Zambesi, Nate doesn't even have to imagine what it feels like to loose her.

He knows.

So yeah. Could they really blame him for being a little suspicious of Leonard Snart? After the little power-melt down the guy had in the Medbay earlier, he thinks not.

Of course, that probably still doesn't mean he can skip dinner.

It's going to be a working meal to diagnose Snart's magic problem, and Sara will be royally pissed if he doesn't show face. Ever since they'd caught Snart that afternoon, she's been acting seven kinds of weird - six of which were definitely a little violent. Nate has a sinking feeling that challenging her orders at the moment is suicidal.

So he makes his way to the Galley, the way any reasonable guy who values his life would.

"I got Gideon to make us roast lamb, fish stew, and a platter of buttered root vegetables and sweet fruits," Ray says enthusiastically once the team has settled in. "You see, it's a traditional Viking feast, and since we're welcoming home one of our old warriors" - he pumps a fist against his chest for effect - "I thought it seemed appropriate."

Leonard Snart takes one look at the ridiculous spread of 900 AD era food and shakes his head. "That's great Raymond, I'll take a cheeseburger," he says without preamble.

What an asshole, Nate thinks, as Ray frowns guiltily at all the food in front of him. "Oh, but I didn't make any-"

"Two double stack cheeseburgers with bacon, coming right up," Mick interrupts, pushing away from the table to stalk towards the food fabricator. Snart smirks at him.

"Yeah mate, I might grab us some fish and chips," Constantine grumbles as well, and quickly gets up to follow Mick.

Nate frowns and bumps a shoulder against Ray's. "I think it looks great buddy," he reassures him. "Lief Ericksson would be super proud-" then he clears his throat and shoots Sara and Zari a look "- right guys?"

Zari looks back at him with a pained expression. "Yeaaah, sure," she says, and starts poking at the bowl of fish stew in front of her.

Of course Sara, who is sitting stiffly between Snart and Zari, doesn't seem to be paying attention at all. She's fingering her butter knife and staring absently at the roast like it might've offended her. Nate had watched her slip into the seat earlier. She'd ironically been the last to arrive for the brainstorming session she'd planned. And when she'd realized that the only seat left was on Snart's right, she'd frozen for half a minute in the doorway.

If Nate thought he was imaging her weirdness earlier, all doubts were gone now. He hopes this means he's not the only one being cautious about this.

Any who, it turns out Sara's approval isn't needed. Ray perks up plenty when he sees that Nate and Zari at least are reasonably excited for a Viking feast.

Fifteen minutes later, they've all settled back at the table with their meals, and the mood in the room turns a bit anxious.

As celebratory as Ray seems to want the night to be, it's impossible to ignore the elephant in the room. Nate expects Sara to kick things off with some sort of Captain speech, but she doesn't. When the butter knife turns over one too many times in her fingers, Zari is the one who clears her throat.

"Okay, we should really start talking about this," she says. Nobody has to ask her to elaborate on what she means. Although Snart does lean back in his chair and lets out a hefty sigh at the announcement. "I've been thinking about it, and maybe it wasn't magic. I mean, my totem has been sensing energy, and Gideon wasn't picking anything up. Maybe I'm registering something else?"

"Ah, well," Ray's eyebrows go up and down dramatically. "It's going to be hard to search for something if we don't have any idea what we're looking for... Here Mick pass the carrots."

There's a flurry of motion as Mick roughly dumps the vegetables in front of Ray. The loud clattering of plates only slightly drowns out the sound of Constantine's amused chuckle. "Were you there earlier, love?" he asks Zari. "That was definitely _something_ of the magical persuasion."

"We didn't have _magic_ problems until like a few weeks ago," Zari rolls her eyes and stabs her fork towards Constantine. "Why couldn't it be literally _anything_ else?"

Constantine rolls his eyes and snorts, but Nate frowns.

Zari's right.

As a historian, magic might be a little bit out of his wheelhouse, but they didn't have these kinds of issues until recently. And Snart didn't disappear recently. He'd disappeared two years ago. Before all the magic troubles... Before Mallus.

That feels important to him.

"You know, maybe Gideon's tests just aren't sophisticated enough for this one. Bet I could try something a bit more unorthodox." John grins wickedly.

Mick promptly bristles, dropping his cheeseburger onto his plate and giving Constantine a murderous glare. "Give me a reason Trench Coat," he threatens. At the same time Zari lets out a withered sigh.

"As riveting as _that_ sounds," Leonard interjects casually, apparently the only one unperturbed by this. "I really prefer to know a guy before I get sophisticated with him."

"Oh we've got time," Constantine slings back with a wink.

Mick is starting to turn a little red, when a loud thump echoes through the room.

All heads swivel over towards Sara. She's taken the butterknife she'd been playing with and embedded it into the wooden table. Even Snart looks startled by it.

Apparently realizing that might've been a bit dramatic, Sara clears her throat.

"Right, let's say Zari's right and it's not magic," she says. Her voice is half-business, half-murderous assassin. "What else could it be?"

The nagging feeling in the back of Nate's head suddenly clears, and he sits up stick straight in his chair. "Wait. I have a theory," he announces.

"Alright, let's hear it," Sara nods to him, crossing her arms and sinking back into her chair.

Constantine and Zari both shoot Nate a 'this-should-be-good' expression, but Nate's mind is moving too fast to care. All the gears are meshing together at once.

"Well, you all said the Oculus was kind of a time spring, or well, right? Like it was a big hole in the ground filled with a bunch of time stuff. And it exploded with Snart standing at like ground-zero? Almost inside of it?" Nate thinks aloud.

Sara nods, missing the point, but Ray's head perks up. "No way. You don't think the radiation could've changed his molecular structure?"

"Well yeah man, don't you? If it didn't kill him, an explosion of that size had to have done something."

"We'd have to run some DNA tests. I don't think it'd manifest in the same gene sequence that meta's have. But maybe I could build like some kind of gauge reader. We'd just need to figure out what kind of particles to search for..."

The theory takes off like a racehorse. Nate and Ray go back and forth - Ray speaks a lot of science, while Nate throws out several obscure Superhero names as relevant points of reference. Nate is so absorbed in the conversation, that he doesn't notice the way Snart's eyes are boring into him, narrowing more with each new line.

He looks less than pleased.

"Oh good. There's two of them now?" Leonard interrupts abruptly, shooting Sara a look that implies it's her fault. "One of you kids want to slow down and explain for the rest of the class? Try using words someone who wasn't bullied in high school would understand."

Nate stops mid-sentence, and the distrustful anger that erupts on his features has a mind of its own.

"Hey I was not _bullied_ in high school," he says caustically.

"Well you could've fooled me," Snart quips back.

"Ooookay, come on guys, we're all friends here," Ray says, one hand coming up to rest on Nate's shoulder before Nate can say something rude about Leonard spending his high school years in juvie. "Len's just teasing. Why don't you explain it Nate. I think it's the best theory we've got yet."

Nate keeps eye-contact with Snart for another second - which is somewhat of a feat. He's not too big a person to admit that Leonard Snart is actually kind of intimidating. He's too relaxed, and he doesn't blink. It's unnerving.

Then again, Nate's a superhero god damnit. He can't just let guys like Leonard Snart start pushing him around. It's in the job description. He debates bringing up the Legion again to remind them all that Leonard probably shouldn't be trusted.

Then he catches Sara's eye.

For a reason he can't quite articulate - but somehow makes him think of Amaya, of all people - he makes himself calm down. For his Captain.

"Well, you basically got dropped in a vat of time chemicals. That's like straight out of a comic book dude. Superpowers 101," Nate says plainly.

When Sara relaxes a little in her seat, he is sure he's done the right thing avoiding a fight.

Snart, thankfully, doesn't press it either. He goes still about half way through Nate's explanation.

"Let me get this straight," he says. His voice is flat and utterly unamused. "You think that instead of _magic,_ I have - what? Time superpowers?"

"Well no," Ray takes over. "We have to run some tests first to be certain. You know, just because you absorbed energy from the Oculus doesn't mean that your DNA's changed, or that you can control it, or that it's going to be particularly useful... but theoretically, it's definitely possible."

Leonard huffs.

"You can do all those test though, right Haircut?" Mick cuts in then, voice uncharacteristically mellow. "You can fuck with all that shit in the lab and know what's wrong with him?"

Ray nods slowly. "Yeah I think so," he says, but he hesitates a little at the end. "It's just, you know I'm not technically a medical doctor."

To say Mick looks grossly unsatisfied with that excuse, is a bit of an understatement. Fortunately, however, Leonard groans before Mick can react too much to Ray's lack of confidence.

"It's fine Mick. I can't believe I'm about to say this," he mutters, shaking his head. Leonard leans forward and props his elbows on the table. "Barry Allen owes me a favor," he announces. "And if I've got what you think I've got, then I think it's about time the kid pays up."

* * *

Leonard wakes up in the middle of the night feeling only slightly better than he did when he fell asleep.

It'd been one hell of a day, and he was still trying to make sense of it.

That's not the reason he can't sleep though. At the moment, what's getting him is the rhythmic jet-engine rumble coming from Mick Rory on the other side of the room. Leonard had known exactly what he'd been getting into when he'd agreed to share a bunk for the night, but somehow it had seemed better at the time than being alone with his own thoughts.

Maybe tonight just wasn't meant for sleep.

Leonard sighs and swings his legs over the edge of his bed. There's no point in spending the next few hours staring at the ceiling. If he's going to be awake, then he's going to be awake with company, and he thinks he knows where to get some.

Sara doesn't disappoint.

He finds her on the bridge, sitting in the pilot's chair with her feet on the dash and a bottle of whiskey in her hand.

Leonard doesn't announce himself at first. It's a rare moment that he can sneak up on her, and he wants to savor it. From the shadows of the adjacent hallway, he watches her as she swishes the bottle around idly in one hand and stares out at the time stream.

It's hard to believe that two years have passed for her. She looks exactly the same as when he'd left her.

Although, the way she was acting earlier was certainly different.

He'd expected the knives and the threats. You kind of had to, when dealing with Sara. But the distance is something new. He'd noticed in the Medbay, when Ray Palmer was standing closer to him than she was. And at dinner, when she'd stiffened like a board after realizing she had to sit next to him.

Absently he finds that he's almost nervous to step out from the corner where he's hiding. The unexpected fissure between them is making him question everything. Did she even mean it when she'd kissed him at the Oculus? Or was she just granting him some kind of hero's farewell, never expecting he'd ever come back wanting more?

If she's going to reject him, he'd almost rather they never have the conversation.

Then again... there had been a few moments today, when whatever wall Sara had built around herself seemed to falter. His mind was stuck on the feeling of her fist wrapped around his jacket sleeve. On the shattered look in her eyes when she'd half-begged to come back on the ship, and the way she'd stared at him after he'd shaved...

Fuck it, he thinks. Sara's whiskey is calling him.

"You know," Leonard says, stepping out from his corner. "I think drinking and driving is still frowned upon, even if you're piloting a time machine."

Sara doesn't startle or acknowledge what he thinks was a pretty clever joke. Instead, she just tilts her head to the side to note that he's there.

Ah.

Well, maybe he hadn't snuck up on her after all.

Sauntering forward, Leonard rounds the control panel in front of her chair, and leans over it to have a better look at her. Sara peers back at him evenly, drinking in his features like she still expects him to roll the drums and announce comically that he's a fake.

When that doesn't happen, she takes another long swig of her whiskey.

"Hi Leonard," she greets finally.

"And here I thought I was getting crafty," he says, unable to contain the little smirk that comes with it. "But you've known I was over there this whole time."

"It's going to take more than a few superpowers for you to get past me, Leonard Snart," she says. Her eyebrow quirks up, taunting him. "Anyways. I know you like to watch."

Leonard feels the air expel involuntarily from his lungs.

God, he's fucked.

There are a lot of things he wants to do to answer that taunt, but he has a feeling every single one of them would spook her. Instead he reaches over the Waverider's dash and wiggles his fingers at Sara. She hands him the whiskey bottle, eye catching with just a hint of mirth.

"Careful Lance. I might think you're challenging me to something," he says and brings the bottle up to his lips. The vanilla after-taste that tingles on the back of his tongue betrays her. This is her good stash of whiskey. She really must be feeling some type of way having him back to have broken this out.

This time she rewards him with a smile, even though it's only a small one.

"No probably not," she admits. He hands her the whiskey back. "If you start trying to sneak up on me, I might accidentally kill you for good."

"Mm. Well I _am_ feeling very attached to my life lately," he says, pretending to contemplate it for a minute. Sara flinches though, and he immediately wants to take the words back. "Sorry," he frowns. "Bad joke."

"It's fine." Although one look at her and he knows that no, it's really not. "I think this-" she waves her hand back and forth between the two of them "- is just going to take some time to get used to again."

Leonard nods, watching her carefully as her face smooths back out again.

"Take your time," he says after a moment. "I'm not planning on going anywhere."

Sara's eyes snap back up to his and the silence that ensues is deafening.

He realizes, belatedly, the double meaning of what he's just offered... but he doesn't regret it. If that's what this is. If she just needs some time to come to terms with him again. He can wait.

"Hopefully not," Sara says quietly. Her head slides back against the pilot's chair, and Leonard thinks the whiskey might be getting to her a little.

"You think I got some place better to be?" he raises an eyebrow.

Sara scrunches her nose - which does _things_ to him that he regretfully ignores.

"No, it's not that," she shakes her head. "It's just... this isn't the first time you've been back. I mean, I guess it's the first time _you've_ been back. But... it's like an annual nightmare. Once a year somebody shows up, who looks like you and talks like you, but isn't _you_. And we just have to keep saying goodbye over and over again."

"Well, glad I can be a part of your annual nightmare then," Leonard grimaces stiffly.

Sara's expression sours. "No, wait that came out wrong... I shouldn't... I've had a _lot_ of whiskey," she says, and waves the bottle at him. He wonders, half-appalled and half-impressed, if it had been unopened at the beginning of the night. "Leonard I've lost you three times now. And that guy, Damien Darhk that's after me. He knows that. I promise, we're going to fight like _hell_ for you to stay, but..." she shrugs. "Today just felt too easy. I have a bad feeling about it."

"Yes, well it _is_ always bad news when I have to start asking Patron Saint Barry Allen for help," Leonard mutters, trying to lighten the mood a little. It doesn't work. Sara hits him with a look that makes his pinky start tapping absently against the table. "You're worried this Darhk guy planted me?" he asks her, turning the thought over in his mind again.

The blank spots in his memory feel bigger than they had earlier. It disturbs him that he can't argue this with her.

"I don't know. Maybe?" Sara shrugs. "He was there the last time they decided to bring you back to mess with us, but that was different. You didn't remember us."

Leonard scowls. Even after Raymond had explained it to him, he is still having trouble believing any version of himself would be enough of an asshole to actually shoot Mick in the chest. He's tried puling that particular trigger enough times in his life to know how hard it is to commit.

"He's going to regret it, if he has," Leonard decides after a moment. "There are no strings on me," his voice tapers off in icy dark irony.

Sara frowns at him, startled and disturbed. He knows they all heard him over the comms that day, before the Oculus went kaboom.

Leonard shakes his head and goes for the whiskey again. He thinks he better polish the rest of the bottle off before Sara manages to drink herself under the table listening to him talk like that.

"Cards?" he asks lightly.

She nods once, a soft look returning to her face.

"Thought you'd never ask."


	3. Hi Barry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, 
> 
> I fought a ton with this chapter while writing it, but I think I've finally got it exactly where it should be! It's a bit of a long one. 
> 
> Enjoy

Mick wakes up and Leonard is gone.

Almost instantly, he writes yesterday's drama down as just another hallucination.

Which is shit.

He'd really thought he'd gotten over them by now. Every damn time they happen, it's like the life is sucked out of him all over again.

"Gideon where's Snart?" he asks duly, just for the hell of it.

"Mr. Snart woke early and is now having his morning coffee in the Galley," Gideon answers. "Shall I tell him you're looking for him?"

Mick blinks.

Snart is in the Galley.

Apparently.

Without answering Gideon, Mick erupts from his room and barrels down the hall like a man possessed.

John Constantine, who is loitering mostly-naked in the hall, jumps half-out of his skin as Mick passes. "Who twisted your knickers in a knot Rory?" he asks, startled.

It's a testament to Mick's focus that he doesn't think about shoulder-checking John even once as he passes. He's too fixated on the task at hand, on seeing Leonard alive with his own eyes again. When he arrives, the door to the Galley is already open. Mick stops short in the threshold and hangs there like a bomb that's short-circuited.

Leonard is sitting at the table, just like Gideon had promised.

He's got a Captain Cold snowflake souvenir mug from Jitters in his hands, filled to the brim with steaming milky coffee. Ray bought Mick that mug as a joke for the holidays last year in a valiant effort to assuage the fresh wave of grief he'd been feeling after memory-wiping Legion Leonard.

Mick has never used it before. Breakfast beer is not the kind of thing you need mugs for.

"Morning Mick," Leonard drawls, raising an eyebrow at him.

He looks tired. There are bags under his eyes that weren't there yesterday, and he's clutching his coffee like a grouchy goblin hoarding treasure.

Mick stares another moment, then looks down at the knuckles on his right hand. The skin is tinged with faint green bruising that matches the ugly purple shiner on Snart's face, and when Mick flexes his fist, it's sore.

He rolls his fingers a few times over to intentionally aggravate it. Nate would probably say something stupid about 'unhealthy coping mechanisms'. But fuck him. The pain is grounding.

Guess yesterday wasn't a hallucination after all.

"I need a beer," Mick announces, when the surprise fades.

Leonard just snorts. "I feel like I've turned this place into a booze cruise," he drawls. His tone is utterly unapologetic, although perhaps a little distant. There's a cold glint in Leonard's eyes that suggests his thoughts are partly elsewhere.

"You spent the night drinking with Blondie. That's why you look like shit?" Mick realizes aloud. No wonder he hadn't been in the room this morning.

Leonard shrugs, not denying it.

It strikes something in Mick. Not a nerve, per se - he knows better than anyone that Sara needs time with Leonard - but something like a nerve. He wishes he hadn't woken up to an empty room this morning when he'd been expecting Leonard to be there.

Before his thoughts get too dark, he heads over to the kitchen to get his morning usual - two beers and three breakfast sandwiches. When Mick returns, he drops an extra sandwich in front of Leonard and gives him a menacing look.

Snart rolls his eyes as he takes it. "Who are you? My mother?"

Mick is not sorry in the slightest. Leonard has a tendency to skip meals when he starts thinking too hard, and Mick can recognize the look on Snart's face from a mile away.

"You were dead," Mick says simply. The 'so-do-what-I-fucking-tell-you' is implied.

Leonard sighs, taking the sandwich and starting to pick at it. The careful thoughtfulness doesn't fade from his face as he eats. If anything, it just gets worse.

Mick makes it all the way through his first sandwich before Leonard's silence starts to annoy him. His partner is so absorbed in his own thoughts that Mick can actually hear the clock ticking. The sound is like a cheese grater rubbing against his temper, and it's not long before he feels like a simmering bomb again.

"You gonna tell me who you're planning to kill?" Mick asks irritably.

"I don't know yet," Leonard says, slightly nonplussed by Mick's stewing anger. "Maybe this Damien Darhk guy, jury's still out."

Mick snorts. The reaction is almost involuntary. "Blondie's gonna kill him," he states, like that door is already shut. "But she'll kill you first if you're an idiot and get in her way."

Leonard gives him a long look. "Oh, I'm sure she'll have to get in line behind you," he says dryly.

Mick doesn't argue with him on that one, because yes, he's right. Hell, Mick is half ready to kill him right now, and he doesn't even know why.

"Relax Mick. I promise, I'm not planning anything yet. I've just got a lot to think about. That's all," Leonard says, waving his hand dismissively.

That doesn't satisfy Mick.

If anything, something about the callousness of Leonard's tone makes it worse. Apparently recognizing his fury, Leonard releases a heavy sigh, sits up a little straighter, and puts his coffee mug down.

Suddenly Mick has his full and undivided attention.

"Listen, Mick.. um..." His face pinches unpleasantly.

"What?" Mick's response is more aggressive than intended, although perhaps less aggressive than he feels. It's not often that Captain Cold trips over his own words.

"I'm sorry," Leonard blurts out.

Mick feels himself go rigid and the two men stare at each other. Both look like they've just bitten a lemon.

"Don't say shit you don't mean Snart," Mick growls.

"Okay... yes. Maybe I'm not actually that sorry I knocked you out," Leonard admits, hands wringing. "But, I'm sorry if you feel like I, ah... left."

Mick wants to punch him again. One time doesn't feel like enough punishment for the fucking stupidity of Leonard's actions.

But he doesn't.

Instead, Mick reaches one fat hand out and grabs Leonard roughly by the collar.

" _Mick_ -" comes the familiar tired warning.

It doesn't matter though. It's too late.

Mick stands up, forcibly dragging Leonard out of his seat, and man-handles him into an abrupt bone-crushing hug. It's not exactly a soft or sentimental thing. Mick hugs Leonard with the angry threatening demeanor of a gorilla that might decide at any moment to strangle him instead.

Leonard returns it stiffly, after his initial fight-or-flight response fades of course.

And when Mick drops Snart, he has to admit, he does feel a little better.

"You do it again, and I'll fucking kill you," Mick says, punctuating the statement with a glare. Then he takes a step back and lowers his violent tone back to a simple simmer. "This never happened."

Leonard gives him a weary look. "Whatever you say big guy," he agrees.

When the two slip back into their seats, the tension between them has subsided, and it feels much more like old times.

* * *

" _Code 3-8-1. I repeat Code 3-8-1_."

Ray's voice booms loudly through the halls of the Waverider.

Over. And over. And over again.

"Alright Ray, I think everyone heard you," Zari yawns as she strolls onto the Bridge.

This had better be good. They'd interrupted her in the middle of her morning Mortal Kombat hour, and she'd been minutes away from beating the latest boss battle.

"Sorry. Nobody seemed to be coming. I wasn't sure you all got the message," Ray says. He's standing at the center consul, his hand hovering over the megaphone button.

Nate and Sara have already arrived as well, which is typical. Ray and Nate are the ship's token morning people, and Zari is mostly sure Sara just doesn't sleep. Whenever they get called together before noon, one of those three is always the instigator.

"Oh we got the message all right. It's just that nobody knows what it bloody means," John says as he enters the room. He's rubbing circles on his temples to nurse his usual morning hangover, and although Zari doesn't smile at him, she probably could.

John's heinous attitude has always been a little refreshing.

"Please don't get him started," Zari says and she jerks her thumb towards Ray.

John picks a spot next to her. "Wouldn't dream of it love," he promises darkly.

It's at that moment that the last two stragglers, Mick and Leonard Snart arrive together.

Immediately, they have most of Zari's attention.

She'll admit it. She's curious about Snart. How could she not be? Half the team has been in complete upheaval since his return - even Nate, who has never technically met the guy. It's like Leonard's very presence has made the Waverider's world shift, and Zari is still evaluating all the changes.

For now, she just focuses on what's in front of her.

The difference between Mick yesterday and Mick today is subtle, but it's there. He seems less chaotic than usual, like he's reigned in all of his usual flagrant aggression and is holding it in a ball close to the chest. She doesn't miss the way he situates himself suddenly with his back to walls, and places Snart just a little bit in front of him.

Leonard isn't oblivious to the way Mick is shadowing him either, and Zari wonders vaguely if he's got a problem with it. Whatever the pair was up to previously, it's left Snart doing his very best impression of a disgruntled cat.

"Why'd the whole team need to meet for a level one Fugitive Haircut?" Mick grunts for the pair upon entrance.

"I called the meeting. Ray just wanted to use the megaphone," Sara supplies casually. Her eyes flicker up to the boys before quickly snapping back down to the Waverider's situation screen.

Zari catches Snart's gaze sharpening on her, though he otherwise maintains his casual slouch.

"Do I want to know why we're speaking in code now?" he grumbles, then cocks his head towards Mick. "Or why _you_ knew what that meant?"

Mick shrugs and Sara's lips twitch into something that could be a smile.

"Oh I've put the Song of Codes on a CD now," Ray beams in response. "I can give it to you later. We can add it to the list of all the things you need to catch up on now that you're back."

"So the answer to your question is nope, you don't want to know," Zari translates for Snart, who gives her a thoughtful withered look.

Beside her, John snorts.

"Come on guys, let's focus," Sara says, and on command the room collects itself. "Gideon detected a magical disturbance in the year 1967, but it's small. She can't find any real impact on history from it."

"How'd she pick it up then?" Nate asks as he crosses his arms.

"Well, that's kind of the problem. I don't know," Sara frowns. She closes her eyes for a moment, almost like she's collecting herself together for something. "And also... the place. The fugitive is apparently at Nanda Parbat."

The team falls silent at that comment.

For the Legends as they are now, Nanda Parbat is almost like Fight Club.

Everyone knows what it is, but it's something that they don't talk about often. Sara tends to get distant quick if they do. Zari's always gotten the impression that some of the older Legends had beaten the topic to death once up a time, and there just wasn't much left that hadn't already been said.

"What's the plan then Cap?" Nate asks softly. His tone is exactly the right mix of sensitive and business. This is why they keep him around, Zari thinks fondly.

"Leonard needs to go see Barry today no matter what, but I don't think we can ignore this either. The team needs to split up. Nate, John, and Mick, you all should take the jump ship with Leonard to 2018 Central City, and the rest of us will go investigate whatever this is," Sara says.

To Zari's surprise, Leonard Snart seems to have an immediate and visceral reaction to this suggestion.

"Sara, I don't need three chaperones to go have a doctors appointment," he says, frowning.

Sara levels a cool look at Snart. She seems utterly unfazed by his protest. More than that, Zari thinks Sara expected it.

"John has to go with you, because S.T.A.R. labs won't be familiar with any magic, and Nate is going because there's a fifty fifty chance Team Flash is going to try to shoot you when you give Barry Allen a heart attack later."

Snart's face sours. "Nobody said anything about traumatizing Barry," he lilts.

Zari might believe him if Sara didn't look so immediately unimpressed by his statement. She catches Nate rolling his eyes as well.

"Leonard, if you're going to play dumb, pick a better angle," Sara says impatiently.

Her tone is sharp and dangerous, and Snart seems to reevaluate her completely in response.

"Fine," he allows, eyes narrowing. "Then Mick-"

"You gonna finish that sentence, boss? " Mick grunts menacingly.

Sara waves a hand in the air like she's also daring Leonard to argue more. He's properly agitated now. All signs of the sarcastic calm that Zari has started to associate with him have vanished.

"Alright, let's not talk about me. Let's talk about you," Leonard says tightly. Somehow, he manages to curl his entire body into an impressive looking sneer. "What's your plan? Going to storm the League of Assassins by yourself, with _Raymond_ as one third of your backup? That's moronic Sara. Rip Hunter was supposed to have cornered the market on terrible ideas."

Ray opens his mouth to protest, but Sara holds up a hand to stop him. She looks disturbingly pleased with herself. Then... "I mean, if you're that worried about Ray, I can send him with you too," she says innocently.

The look Leonard rewards her with is positively bone-chilling.

"It's a level one fugitive," Sara continues. "We'll be fine. Right Mick?"

"Yeah stop bitching."

Leonard doesn't look like he wants to stop bitching.

No, he looks angry.

His shoulders are rigid, and his arms are crossed, and Zari is under the impression that he'd be able to fight with Sara for half the day if it meant winning the argument. Sara's stubborn though. Zari may not know Snart all that well, but she knows the look of steel that's glowing in Sara's eyes. When Sara gets like this, there's almost no point in trying to reason with her.

Tension mounts in the room as the debate turns non-verbal. Snart glares at Sara over the center consul and she glares right back, and the rest of the team waits for one of them to give in.

As an outside observer, it's borderline uncomfortable to watch.

Zari leans over towards John.

"Nobody warned me to start bringing popcorn to team meetings," she whispers beneath her breath.

A conspiratorial smirk stretches across his face. "You think they used to shag?" he asks, looking happier than John 'I-walk-the-world-alone' Constantine ever should.

"Mm, maybe, but I don't think so," Zari replies as she evaluates the staring contest that's happening in front of them. "This feels pretty unresolved."

"I'll have to see if I can get it out of Rory later," John nods. "But I give it a week now that the bloke's back."

"Oh no. I bet you twenty they make it longer than that. Two and a half weeks."

"You're on, love."

As a handshake would probably be a little obvious, they subtly knock fists to seal the deal, and return their full attention back to the meeting.

In the end, Sara wins the fight with Leonard. Not that anybody is surprised by that.

* * *

Leonard is livid.

Sara just played him like a fucking fiddle, and there is nothing he could've done about it.

 _I mean if you're that worried about Ray, I can send him with you too,_ her voice dances tauntingly through his mind.

She'd known the game before he'd even realized what was at stake.

Leonard and Mick _should_ be taking this trip to Central City solo, but instead, Sara has managed to wrap him in the human equivalent of superhero bubble wrap.

It's ridiculous. Unnecessary... Dangerous.

Leonard hates the idea of Sara waltzing into Nanda fucking Parbat without proper back up because of him. They used to trust each other more than this. She should've just let him take care of himself. It would've been fine.

Right?

More than anything, Leonard hates that this excursion is necessary in the first place - he should be going _with_ her to take on the League.

It hadn't sunk in yesterday, how disturbed he was about his little episode in the Medbay. Now he can barely think of anything else. Leonard had lost control of himself, and that was unacceptable.

Even now, he knows he has to be careful, because if he thinks about it too hard, it'll make the visions come back. He'll be at the Oculus again, holding that damn trigger down with both hands while the world around him falls apart. Sara will be there. She's always there. Shouting no, grabbing his arm, and kissing him.

Leonard had told himself that it wasn't real, but who is he kidding?

He can't remember the thirty seconds yesterday between Sara's questions and Mick's comment. It is just another blank spot to go with the rest of them - the real world replaced with the searingly crisp feeling of Sara's lips on his.

He wonders if it's safe for him to be near the team when he's like that, but there's no way to know without some kind of incident.

Team Flash had _better_ be able to fix this.

Of course for better or worse, Leonard hasn't actually told anybody about the visions yet.

He'd thought about it last night when he'd been with Sara, but it felt like too much to unload on her. Their relationship suddenly felt so fragile, like one wrong word would make everything shatter to pieces.

He couldn't risk it yet.

As for the rest of the team... well fuck no is he telling them.

The fact that he is hallucinating about Sara is absolutely need-to-know. Hell, he'd almost let Mick beat the shit out of him this morning because he'd been stewing silently on this nonsense. He's just lucky that Mick apparently learned some new conflict resolution techniques these past two years.

(Leonard still isn't quite sure what to make of the whole _hugging_ thing. He supposes it's probably preferable to getting clocked in the jaw.)

For the mean time, it's much easier to pretend like nothing is wrong. Leonard is in enough of a mood already. Everyone will be happier if he channels his nerves into doing something he enjoys.

Like scaring the living shit out of Barry Allen.

Sara had called that one on the nose earlier.

After all, what's the point of dying, if you can't come back as a ghost to haunt the Flash?

Their little entourage of four lands in 2018 on a crisp Saturday in June about a quarter mile away from S.T.A.R. labs, and by the time they touch ground, Leonard has successfully pushed all thoughts of Sara and their fight into a dark decrepit box labeled "Open Later".

From the drop point, it's only a short walk to their destination, but these moments are critical for Leonard's expedition. He needs to focus. Particularly because he knows he has an inside-man on this job who wants to sabotage him.

"Nathaniel, I'll give you this warning one time. Put the phone away or I break it," Leonard drawls casually.

Nate's forehead crinkles in confusion. "But it's the weekend. Somebody's got to call Barry and-," he starts to protest.

Leonard gives Mick a look, and the big guy swiftly snatches the phone right out of Nate's hands.

"Don't be a spoil sport Pretty," he grunts, pocketing it.

Leonard and Mick never actually stopped to discuss breaking-and-entering into S.T.A.R. labs, but they don't need to. For the two of them, the phrase 'visiting Barry' might as well be synonymous with 'kick the door down', even if no actual thieving is on the menu.

Of course, Nate doesn't know Leonard all that well. He supposes that the kid will have to be excused for not realizing there is a felony on the agenda for the day.

"Wait," Nate pauses in his tracks. "You're not planning to...but Barry and Team Flash are our friends. Why would we need to break in?"

"Because we can," Mick says, giving Nate one of his more chaotic smiles.

Leonard can't help but smirk. This is _exactly_ what he needs after his jarring return to the Waverider.

Nate huffs and twists towards Constantine, looking for backup.

Their resident warlock is walking about a yard behind the rest of them with a cigarette burning in his mouth. "Don't look at me mate. I'm just here for the magic. It's your job to play babysitter," he says.

"Oh, come on guys, Sara sent me to make sure you stayed out of trouble," Nate tries in one last valiant attempt to sway them. It's useless. Leonard can smell the defeat radiating off him from a mile away.

"Correction," he says easily. "She sent you to make sure we didn't get shot _after_ we got into trouble. Big difference."

Nate groans, one hand running up through his notably quaffed hair. "I think I'd rather be fighting assassins in Nanda Parbat," he mutters under his breath.

Leonard stiffens a little, and his good mood is suddenly clouded again with thoughts of Sara.

Wouldn't we all, he thinks to himself bitterly.

Thankfully, there isn't too much time to let that thought fester, as the four arrive at the front door of S.T.A.R. labs.

Leonard immediately throws his full focus towards surveying the front area for security measures. He spots two cameras pointed in their direction, some basic turn key locks on the double doors, and a buzzer speaker against the wall that reads "Press for Cisco" in enthusiastic red and yellow lettering.

None of this specifically concerns him.

Cameras are only good if somebody's on the other end, and given the lab has four people on its payroll, he doubts they take the time to monitor their footage live. Later, maybe he'll say something to Cisco about investing in some motion sensors. He'd prefer it if his adversaries at least pretended to present him with a challenge.

"Oh no, the door's locked," Nate hums in faux drama as he gives the handle a good pull. "Guess we better call Barry so they'll let us in."

"That's cute," Leonard says, pulling a wire out of his jacket pocket and wedging it through the crease in the door. He's through in four seconds flat.

Constantine lets out a low appreciative whistle. "Good with tools, are we?"

"Call it a magic trick," Leonard shrugs.

Now that they're through the first door, it's clear that the rest of S.T.A.R. labs security is just as abysmal as it always is. That is to say, it's nonexistent. They're able to take the elevator right up to the main office without any resistance.

At least the door to the main control room is locked, though it's not any more sophisticated than the one he'd broken out front. Leonard considers pulling out the lock pick again before changing his mind.

"Hinges Mick?"

His partner grunts, and the pair make quick work, removing the door in its entirety and setting it aside.

"Oh and _that_ lock was too complicated for you?" Nate asks, crossing his arms.

Constantine snorts.

"No mate, they're just being arseholes."

"Takes an asshole to know an asshole. Asshole," Mick half-growls and he makes a point to get in Constantine's face as he walks first into the control room.

Leonard eyes the situation carefully, watching to see John's reaction. Their warlock seems fairly unfazed by Mick's poking, maybe even a little amused by it. That's good. Mick's just messing with him right now, but not everyone has the head to realize that. Leonard has watched full brawls break out in the middle of jobs before when Mick starts to get under people's skin, and unfortunately it's no longer socially acceptable for Leonard to just shoot the people Mick starts fights with.

Maybe Constantine isn't so bad after all, Leonard thinks idly. Mick probably is just triggered by the popped collar and the tie. They do make the guy look like douchebag.

Shirking away from the now-empty doorframe, Leonard moves to follow Mick into the control room.

That was their last obstacle. Now they're officially in.

His eyes trail over Barry's Flash suit on the far wall, and he can't help but feel a little smug.

Of course, other than the copious amounts of technology lying about, the room is empty. Apparently Team Flash has indeed decided to take their Saturday morning off, but Leonard can fix that easy enough.

He takes a seat in front of Cisco's computer set-up and starts to poke at some of the keyboards while Nate and John file into the room.

It only takes a minute to find what he's looking for - a big red thing on an iPad that's helpfully labeled "PANIC BUTTON" in bold letters.

Leonard grins. They have really made this too easy for him.

"Alright Flash," he mutters to himself. "Let's see how fast you are."

He kicks his stop watch off at the same time he triggers their alarm.

They wait.

One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. Then...

There's a sudden whoosh of air and an abrupt blue glow of light in the hallway, followed quickly by loud panicked voices.

"PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM OR I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL SHOOT!" Cisco bellows as he erupts into the room, flourishing a nasty looking gun in his hands. Barry is right beside him, dropped in a low runner's crouch like he's ready to start a forty yard dash.

Leonard spins the office chair around and holds both of his hands up casually in surrender.

Both Barry and Cisco seem to short circuit the minute they see his face.

Damn, he loves a good dramatic entrance.

"Three minutes and twenty two seconds," he informs them happily. "Seems a little slow if you ask me."

"Snart?!" Barry gapes. His eyes flicker up to see Mick, John, and Nate lounging around the inner areas of the room.

"Hi Barry," Nate says, sounding pained. He raises his hand in a slow half-hearted wave. There's an apology somewhere in that greeting, and it makes Barry and Cisco drop the offensive.

Leonard is certainly not going to tell Sara later that bringing Nathaniel was a good idea, but he supposes if the point is not to get shot, then Nate has served his purpose. Cisco has indeed lowered his gun.

"But... you're dead?" Barry stammers in disbelief.

"Yes, well you know what they say, tales of my death have been greatly exaggerated," Leonard drawls.

"Whoa, wait wait," Cisco holds up a hand. "Are we talking like, Westley in _Princess Bride_ here or more Nick Fury in _Captain America The Winter Soldier_?"

"Definitely more Nick Fury. We don't think he was ever actually dead," Nate supplies immediately, and John mutters something rude about American Superhero movies under his breath.

Barry finally straightens out of his crouch, and a wild grin stretches across his face. He looks at Leonard again with an expression like Christmas has suddenly come early.

"That's great news," he beams. "What happened? I mean, it's been like two years, where've you been all this time?"

"Isn't _that_ the million dollar question," Constantine says.

Leonard scowls. This is the part he isn't particularly excited for. "I suppose this is where I tell you that we didn't just come to shame your security system," he grumbles.

Barry scratches the back of his head. He seems to have just realized the door to their lab is sitting in the hall, completely detached from the frame. "Right. Um... well what can we do for you guys? You know we're always happy to help the Legends."

"We need you to call that ice chick we kidnapped and get her to check out Snart," Mick speaks up.

Leonard suppresses a groan.

"Caitlin? Why? What's wrong with you?" Cisco frowns, eyes narrowing. He probably didn't need to be reminded about the various times Leonard and Mick have tried to kill them all.

"Well, it's a long story, but our working theory is time superpowers," Nate says.

"Or mystical intervention," John adds dryly.

"Whatever it is, you're going to get rid of it," Leonard says firmly. "You still owe me for Shark Week."

"Aw c'mon Snart. I think we're passed exchanging favors just because we owe each other. Of course we'll help," Barry says with a good-natured smile.

Leonard levels him with a surly look before Barry get's it in his head that he needs to pat him on the shoulder or something. The kid is too much like Ray with all the physical affection, and Leonard has no patience for it.

Cisco sighs.

"I'll call Caitlin and Harry," he says to Barry in a resigned tone. "Explaining why you just gave Captain Cold a free visitors pass is totally on you though buddy."

Good. Now all that's left to do is wait. 

* * *

Ra's Al Ghul is not in Nanda Parbat.

That's Sara's first sign that something is wrong.

She doesn't know whether his absence is part of the original timeline - records on the League of Assassins are intentionally few and far between - but she does know that it's much easier to break into her old home while the Demon's Head is abroad.

Without Ra's there to screen visitors, Sara doesn't need to devise a winning argument to gain his favor for their Fugitive search. All she has to do is craft a black League costume on the Waverider and walk through the front doors like she belongs there.

The guards ask for her name, and she gives it, Ta-er al Sahfer. They find her blood signature in the logs dated from 1958 and that's that.

She has free reign of the place.

"We're in," she mutters quietly into her earpiece.

"And Len was worried," Ray says.

He is standing miniaturized in the folds of her black collar while Zari quarterbacks for them back at the ship. Given that Nanda Parbat is one of the most heavily fortified cities on the planet, this two-man stealth set-up seemed the only option.

" _Don't jinx it_ ," Zari crackles over comms.

"Yeah, I second that," Sara agrees. "It's bad news that Ra's is out."

"Well, if something happens then I guess maybe Leonard _was_ right, and we'll just have to tell him so when they get back later," Ray chirps unhelpfully.

She's going to kill him.

Ray has not stopped needling her about Leonard since the others left on the jump-ship earlier. He's made it abundantly clear that while he backs her decisions, he doesn't necessarily agree with her methods.

 _It's just, wasn't that a little harsh? He seemed pretty angry._ Ray had said to her, the minute they'd left.

Sara would've thought Ray would understand the fight was unavoidable, given that he knows Leonard about as well as anybody. It's the very same instinct that made the idiot sacrifice himself at the Oculus. Leonard is completely unwilling to leave team members behind, which is undoubtedly what he felt he was doing today when he sent Sara off to Nanda Parbat.

It's a good quality to have. It really is, but it also got him killed once and she _needs_ him alive now. Sara would've sent the whole team with him and run this League mission solo in a heartbeat if she could've gotten away with it.

" _For what it's worth, I thought this morning was spectacular,"_ Zari buzzes in her ear.

Scratch that, Sara is going to kill them both.

"Can we just focus on the mission?" she hisses.

"Aye aye Captain!"

Sara walks through the torch-lit halls at a brusque pace. Thus far, they haven't seen anything out of place, but she thinks that should change soon. The course she's taking will lead them to the archives and store rooms first. If somebody is going to try and take advantage of Ra's absence, that is the place where the most valuable items, weapons, and artifacts will be.

It's also not a bad spot to hide something. A magical trinket would hardly be out of place down in the vaults.

If this turns out to be a bust, their backup plan is to try the prison and torture chambers next, but Sara would much prefer it if that could be avoided. There are certain things in life that you just can't unsee, and both Zari and Ray are better off kept far away from that place.

" _Stay sharp. There's a heat signature around the corner._ "

"That's where the weapons room should be. It's probably just somebody getting ready for a mission," Sara says, even as her hand moves to rest on the sword at her hip. There's a separate room upstairs for training blades. Anybody who is retrieving something deep in the fortress must be preparing for a serious battle.

Sara turns the corner thinking that she's ready for anything, but when confronted with the man standing in the center of the room, she realizes that she's not.

"Oh," he pauses when he sees her frozen there. "Well you're here earlier than expected. You know, I really could use another five minutes. If you wouldn't mind just turning around..."

It's Damien Darhk.

He's right there in his fancy button up suit, rambling like he runs the place. There's a large open trunk in front of him that Sara knows is filled with various herbal drugs - most of which are never used for pleasant purposes - and he appears to have been picking through them for something specific.

Sara realizes that he doesn't know it's her. She's still dressed in her 'League-Goon' outfit and her face is concealed. He must think she's just one of the patrols.

Good.

There is no time to deliberate an action plan with Zari and Ray, so Sara does the only thing that feels right.

She lunges.


	4. Bet You I Can Name a Third Person

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good lord this chapter was rough. I got the whole Sara scene done in like a day and then Leonard fought me for two weeks. Sorry for the cliff hanger. Originally, there was going to be a Constantine POV to explain what's up with Len, but I pushed it to the next chapter so I could get this up. Hope you like it!

Sara leads with knives.

They whiz through the air with deadly precision, and if Damien were an ordinary man, that would be it. Death by three stab wounds to the head, heart and liver. Instead, Damien's hand cracks up quicker than a whiplash, and the knives slow to a stop mid-air like a scene straight out of the Matrix.

That's okay. The knives are a distraction. Sara has fought so many versions of Darhk now that she knows a frontal assault will never work.

"Well _somebody's_ got a happy trigger finger," Damien huffs.

Ray and Zari are exchanging half-panicked words in her ear - _Darhk is here. No backup. Get out._

They have to realize though that it's too late. Now that Damien has seen her, the only way out is through.

"Ray, you stay small till the last second," Sara commands.

Then she's on the ground, rolling to the left of the center store room table so that it blocks Damien's view of her. The strategy works well enough because the knives clink to the ground, and Darhk does not yet have her in that debilitating force-choke.

With her own line-of-sight hampered, the game changes. Throwing stars are now her weapon of choice.

She arcs them left and right, around the table, over the table, and under it. Some of them are targeting Darhk and predictably these don't take.

But some are not for him. Four swerve wide, slicing through a rope that holds one of the weapons racks upright behind him. There's a dangerous clatter of steel followed by a surprised yelp as an arsenal descends on her enemy.

Sara does not wait to see if Damien can deflect it. She springs upwards, vaulting clean over the table, and unsheathes the standard issue League sword that's on her hip.

For an exhilarating moment, she thinks this is it, that today is the day she takes Damien Darhk's head.

The blade whistles in the air, making a full circle until it just kisses the vulnerable skin of Damien's neck. Then his right hand twists and time itself seems to stop.

The sword halts without making full impact with his flesh.

A furious strangled sound erupts form Sara's throat as she realizes it's over. Whatever small window of opportunity she'd had is gone.

"Oh-ho, well that was a close one," Damien grins. He lowers his left hand, allowing the collection of swords and spears she'd dropped on him to clatter harmlessly to the ground. With a flick of his right, her weapon flies away as well.

All that and she's only managed to coax a single drop of blood to trickle down the side of his neck.

Well... hopefully she's stained his suit collar at least.

"Now?" Ray asks over the comms. He's no longer on her shoulder - she lost him when she tumbled behind the table - but that's good because Damien might've seen him otherwise.

Of course, Sara can't reply now without giving them away...

" _I'll tell you when Ray. Give it another minute. Sara, see if you can get him talking,"_ Zari says.

That's swell.

Sara would probably pick one hundred forms of torture over making conversation with Damien Darhk. But Zari is probably right. It usually isn't hard to coax Damien into a monologue, and beyond 'kill Sara' they have no idea what he's currently angling for.

"You look frustrated," Damien observes brightly. He steps forward and yanks her face cover down, not looking the least bit surprised when he sees its her. "Sara Lance. Of course, I should've guessed. Would you believe you're the only person I know who just jumps straight to the murder part? I mean even Ra's usually humors me with a little banter."

Sara's lip curls. "It's the part we're both really itching for. Excuse me for cutting out all your melodrama," she grits.

Damien smiles at her like she's amused him. It makes her skin crawl. "Well _that's_ fairly short-sighted, as always," he clicks his tongue. "Believe it or not, I'm actually not interested in killing you today."

Sara can't help herself. The opening is too good.

"Finally realized it's your own damn fault Nora died?" she asks him.

And yes, that does it. The amusement is gone. Damien's piercing blue eyes flash with open loathing, and there's a sudden tight feeling in her chest, like someone has gripped one of her lungs and squeezed.

Sara wheezes, choking on air, feeling her muscles strain as she tries futilely to twist away from him.

Then it's gone as quickly as it began.

"Careful," Damien says, holding up a finger towards her. "I'm busy today, not patient." His attention drifts away from her, back to the chest he'd been rummaging through when she'd attacked him. Whatever he needs in there must be important for him to split his attention away from her like this. "Now why don't you save us both some time and tell me where your friends are? We both know that you didn't come here alone."

" _Sara, Ray's in position, but this is your chance. Ask him about Snart,"_ Zari says urgently in her ear.

Shit. It can't have been more than two minutes since she'd thrown those first three knives - fights are quick like that - but suddenly it seems unfathomable that she's made it so long without thinking of Leonard.

Zari is right. Sara _has_ to know if Damien is behind his return. She's never going to feel like he's safe with that question hanging over their heads.

"They're handling the present you left us in Russia. I'd be with them too, but I'll always make time for you _Damien_ ," Sara snarls.

It's impossible to hide how angry she is at the very thought of Damien meddling with Leonard.

Perhaps that's why he pauses so sharply at her response. His gaze lifts from the medicinal trunk and attempts to flay her with its intensity.

"A present?" Damien says curiously. He waits another moment to see if she'll give anything more away before continuing slowly. "As much as I _love_ the gift giving season, I've got to admit, all my presents for you Sara are still in the works..."

Sara's breath hitches in her throat.

Damien Darhk has no clue what she's talking about.

Not only has he just admitted it, but she realizes he hasn't made any digs at her yet. Hasn't used Leonard's name like some sort of weapon. If he had even an inkling that Snart was back, she's sure he would be stomping that nerve into the ground.

Sara knows it's a bad idea to react to the news while he's examining her so closely, but she can't help herself. She _grins_ , lips pulling so wide it almost hurts, and when she sees how much he hates it, they pull wider still.

"Should I be jealous?" Damien asks her dubiously, and the pressure on her lungs returns. "Did you Legends piss off another megalomaniac that I should be aware of? And I swear to god, if you say the name Malcolm Merlyn..."

Sara gasps for air against his mounting annoyance. She's had quite enough of this.

"Now!" she chokes out.

Ray appears out of nowhere, right on top of Damien. It's not even an attack really - more like he's just spontaneously decided to sit on the man - but there's no question it's effective.

Damien crashes to the ground with a startled grunt, and Sara is released from his magic's hold.

Then she's falling too.

She realizes too late that she never fully cleared the table during her attempt to decapitate him. The edge catches her calf when she tries to pull her knees up, and she's suddenly twisting face first towards the floor.

There is no graceful landing.

Sara brings her arms up instinctively to protect her head, and her right explodes with white hot pain on impact. Broken, she knows immediately, but there's no time to nurse it. She lets the adrenaline carry her, pulling her injured arm to her chest, and grabbing for the first weapon she sees - a spear - with her left.

By the time she looks up again, Damien has already thrown Ray across the room, and is pushing himself back to his feet. Blood weeps from a fresh gash on his cheek, and his prim suit is slightly mangled.

Sara is suddenly very thankful that she landed in a spot clear of pointy objects.

"Well, as fun as this has been, I think that's my cue to leave," Damien says, voice just short of a growl. He has something green clutched in one hand and Mallus's time stone held in the other. "Sara, dear. Take care. I've got big plans for you, and I would be _very_ cross if you let somebody else cancel them."

"Go to Hell," she snarls back.

She's ready to lunge again, broken arm be damned, but Damien's time stone starts to glow.

When her spear lashes forward, there is nothing but air to meet it.

* * *

Leonard sits in a S.T.A.R. labs exam chair and hopes desperately that this isn't going to become his new normal. He has been in _way_ too many medical facilities these last twenty four hours, and it's not good for his sanity.

Thank god, they've left him mostly alone now.

Half-a-day spent as a test subject has left him feeling strung out and vulnerable, and one more wrong touch is liable to send him spiraling on a murder bender.

Caitlin Snow is the one who noticed. She forced the geek squad to retreat to the corner white board an hour ago in an effort to at least give him the illusion of space. Barry and Mick are the only two who didn't join them.

Mick, who procured a book from _somewhere_ earlier, has been pretending to ignore everyone since they first settled in the med-room. It'd be a much more convincing act if he didn't pause to curse at Leonard every so often - usually when he started to become a particularly difficult patient.

As for Barry... well Barry is just blatantly hovering. He stands off to Mick's left, not-quite vibrating with nervous energy, and Leonard can't help but think he's met vertigo addicts calmer than the Flash.

"Hey Snart," Barry faux whispers, just as their silence starts to become peaceful.

A poorly stifled sigh escapes from Leonard's chest. "Barry," he replies.

"What happened to your face?"

Leonard scoffs.

"My friends are better than yours, Flash."

"He deserved it," Mick nods, eyes never leaving his book.

Barry frowns, looking far more concerned than he has any right to be. Leonard hasn't deciphered yet why the kid isn't playing meta-detective with the rest of his friends. At first, he thought Team Flash just wanted special eyes on Captain Cold and Heat Wave - for the greater good of society and all - but it's not like the rest of them aren't right there _,_ hunched over charts and monitors, muttering things in low voices.

(Bad news, Leonard thinks.)

And if it were really about adult supervision, then Nathaniel probably has that corner covered. Captain America has been watching him like a hawk all day, and Leonard would know. Last time he joined the Legends, it took a while for Kendra-the-actual-Hawk to trust him.

He'll never admit it, but he actually misses the old familiar faces. Kendra, Jax, Stein, maybe even Rip.

He thinks their presence might've provided some sense of normalcy to the complete shit show that's occurring in the nerd-corner.

("Whoa whoa. Hear me out. The magic is totally blocking all the sensors. You know, electromagnetic ghosts anyone? The Poltergeist? White Noise?!" Cisco is half-shouting.

"Yeah, one problem with that. Snart is not a bloody ghost!" Constantine snaps back.)

Perhaps Barry is just trying to torture him with conversation.

If so, well then mission accomplished.

"When I got out of the speed force last year, my friends gave me a hug and threw a welcome home party. You know, said hello in lots of friendly, non-violent ways," Barry says pointedly.

It's like the kid is begging for him to make it worse.

"Mm, that's charming. Sara almost slit my throat," Leonard supplies easily.

He tilts his neck back so that they can see the thin red scab that's next to his Adam's apple. It's immediately worth it to see the way Barry's eyes bulge.

"Twenty bucks Lisa socks you too," Mick says smugly.

("Maybe we should trigger one of these attacks. That's the only way we're going to get good data on it," Harry suggests.

"Oh yeah, because that sounds _safe_ ," Caitlin hisses.)

"Call me what you want Mick, I'm not a sucker," Leonard drawls. Because, yeah, after Lisa get's over the initial shock, he knows she's going to be livid.

Mick called her earlier while they were waiting on Harry and Caitlin. She should be well on her way here by now, maybe arriving any minute. They told her that Team Flash was calling in a favor for helping with Lewis all those years ago. 'Hey sis, I'm back from the dead' didn't seem like the sort of news Leonard wanted to drop on her over the phone.

Barry moves to lean against the doorframe, and considers Mick. "You know what? I'll take you on," he declares after a moment. "Twenty bucks Lisa doesn't punch Snart."

"And here I told Nathaniel we weren't going to rob you today," Leonard says, unimpressed.

"Come on, she's your sister. She's going to be happy to see you."

Mick just snorts. "He never told her we were leaving. She's gonna be pissed as fuck."

Ungh.

It really does sound bad when Mick says it like that, and Leonard wishes that he wouldn't. He doesn't want to be nervous about seeing Lisa, the one person in the world whose always been on his side.

She must feel like he abandoned her though, and fuck if the thought of that doesn't hurt.

("Well what if we didn't trigger an attack?" Cisco says.

Caitlin pauses. "You want to vibe him?"

Cisco nods.

"No offense mate, as much as we all want to vibe Snart, you don't seem like his type" Constantine smirks.)

Barry, of course, is utterly flummoxed. "You just left her in Central City without saying goodbye?" he asks incredulously.

This is definitely not helping the anxious guilt Leonard already feels about the situation. He starts to drum his pinky idly against the arm of his chair. The quiet _tap-tap-tap_ of his metal ring hitting the plastic surface calms him a little.

"We were boarding a time ship. It didn't seem necessary," Leonard mutters, taking his free hand and pressing his thumb against the bridge of his nose.

The kid shakes his head and releases a deep resigned sigh. "I want to say I can't believe you, except that I kind of can."

Leonard doesn't bother to respond to that. It's high time this conversation died, and he thinks maybe if he ignores Barry for long enough, he'll get the message and finally give Leonard some quiet.

But no, of course not. A few moments pass, and he takes another glance at Barry to find Central City's golden boy is still fucking staring at him.

"Get it off your chest," Leonard scowls.

Barry has the audacity to look sheepish as he shifts his weight nervously from one foot to the other.

"Oh um... Well, you know Snart, what you did... I think it was pretty brave. You saved the world."

Leonard lets out an audible groan. "Don't get your hero panties in a twist," he snaps. "Raymond saved the world. I saved Mick. If you think I would've done it for anybody else, then think the fuck again."

A sudden hush falls over the room. To Leonard's complete and utter despair, he realizes that everyone just heard him say that.

Nathaniel, John, Cisco, Caitlin, Harry - all of them have stopped with the science to stare at him.

He _hates_ it.

Although, perhaps not as much as Mick hates it. The big guy has finally put the book down and is glaring at Leonard like he'd just slapped him.

"Yeah, fuck you Snart," Mick growls.

It takes every ounce of Leonard's self-control not to roll his eyes. At some point, they're gong to have to go more than twelve hours without Mick getting angry about the Oculus. Sure, Leonard gets it. If their roles had been reversed, he would be royally pissed too. But he cares about the oaf, and Mick is going to have to deal with that eventually.

His gaze peels away from Mick back to the rest of them. Originally, Leonard intends to say something acerbic and rude to get them back to work. However, the words die on his tongue when he finds that Barry has turned ominously smug while his attention was diverted.

"Lisa too," Barry grins. "You would've saved Lisa too."

Jesus, why does this matter?

Leonard folds his arms over his chest, and fixes Barry with one of his coldest glares.

"Fine, Lisa too. You want me to give you a gold star?"

The edges of Barry's lips quirk. "Well, if you're offering..."

"Don't finish that sentence."

Leonard feels Mick's mood shift before he sees it, and his eyes snap automatically to his partner.

Leonard stills.

He knows that look. It's the kind that usually says 'I'm-about-to-commit-arson-and-I'm-going-to-enjoy-it.' Except, Mick doesn't have a lighter out.

"Bet you, I can name a third person," Mick says slowly.

Leonard's eyes narrow.

"You wouldn't _dare_."

Oh, but Mick definitely would, and they both know it.

If he thought he was going to have a coronary before, it's nothing compared to this. Leonard can practically hear his own heart thrumming in his ears, as his jaw ticks angrily and something green blots at the edges of his vision.

He holds Mick's gaze for approximately five seconds before he realizes that he's completely unwilling to push him on this one. Not with the whole room as an audience. Leonard would rather jam his finger in a light socket than discuss Sara here in open forum.

For Pete's sake, John Constantine is grinning like he's god damn Gossip Girl over in the corner.

Mick's such an asshole.

" _Fine_ ," Leonard growls, caving. "Barry, you're right. I did save the world like a god damn superhero. Guess all of you owe me for saving your lives, again."

Mick's face morphs into a wicked grin that Leonard greets immediately with a scowl.

"I feel like that wasn't the point," Barry mutters. His eyes flicker between the two Rogues with no small amount of confusion.

Leonard, of course, is now ready to eviscerate anybody who wants to start asking questions, but thankfully, it's unnecessary.

Harrison Wells clears his throat and takes a step forwards.

Apparently, the geek-squad made some progress after all.

* * *

"Alright, well," Harry cuts through the awkward in the room like he barely realized it was ever there. "We want to run one more test on you."

"Really, you missed one?" Leonard asks dryly.

Harry, who Leonard has never actually met before today, is apparently not a man of great patience. He gives Leonard an unimpressed look before waving a curt hand in the air. "Of a sort," he clips. "Ramon, you explain it to him."

"Mm, you know one of these days, you're going to ask for something nicely and the world is going to end," Cisco says crossly.

"Ramon."

"Yeah yeah, whatever," Cisco turns towards Leonard. "Sooo, fun story. I have superpowers, and I'm going to vibe you. Got it?"

Leonard shifts in his chair. That was a shit explanation, and they both know it. Although, to be fair, Leonard does realize he's never done much to earn Cisco's patience or trust. Sure, he helped rob ARGUS that one time to save Iris, but perhaps that didn't make up for kidnapping the kid and torturing his brother.

Whoops.

"And what if I say no," Leonard asks dubiously.

"If you say no, then we don't do it," Caitlin says immediately. Her eyes dart sternly between Cisco and Harry, like she's daring them to contradict her. "But we think this is going to really help us understand where you've been the last two years."

Nate flexes his head to the side to stretch a tense shoulder. "Come on Snart, we're like almost done. Just do this one last thing so we can get back to the Waverider," he says. "He's just got to touch your hand. You won't even feel it."

Leonard considers them. Maybe it's just his usual cynicism, but he has an ominous feeling about this 'vibe' thing.

"Snart," Mick says. His humor from a moment ago is gone. This is Mick's precursor to an argument.

Leonard's mouth twists.

You know what? He'd do just about anything to get out of this chair right now.

"Fine, just do it," he says and extends a hand, palm up towards Cisco.

Cisco takes another two steps forward, hesitating in front of him for only a second, before he reaches out and takes it.

Nathaniel was wrong.

Leonard knows exactly when the vibe starts.

Cisco's palm brushes his, and the ground disappears beneath his feet. There's a brief sensation of falling and a dizzying swirl of green, and he knows before it starts that the Oculus vision has engulfed him completely.

He opens his eyes and it's like he never left. His fingers ache against the hot metal of the deadman's switch, Mick's body lies prone by his feet, and Sara is staring at him like the earth itself has shattered to pieces.

Leonard immediately feels like he's drowning.

"Whoa," a strange voice mutters.

He blinks. Someone else is here. Someone who shouldn't be.

Cisco.

Fuck.

For a moment, his mind is swept clean and filled with nothing but white noise. Cisco does not seem to be aware that Leonard can see him. He's too focused on the chaos that surrounds them - on the laser guns and the shouting and the glowing blue Wellspring.

Then Leonard feels himself speak - not to Cisco, but to Sara.

"Get him out of here."

And Cisco realizes where the real action is happening.

 _"_ No _,"_ Sara's voice cracks. Suddenly, the thought of looking anywhere but at her feels like utter madness, and Leonard aches at the pain that's erupted on her face.

But Cisco is _there_.

He's going to see.

No, Leonard can't -

 _"_ Just do it."

Panic wracks through him. This is too personal. Too painful. Nobody was ever meant to see this from him.

But Sara is already stepping forward.

He feels like he's being split in two. There's one half of him that's so utterly absorbed by her that Cisco's presence doesn't matter. While the other half bellows and writhes and yells and demands for it to stop. That part of him rebels. It pushes violently, desperately against the green, against Sara and against Cisco. He needs to throw them out before...

... She's there. Lips crushing against his, and he feels his chest crack open all over again, spilling over with more feelings than his body was ever meant to handle. It swallows him, sucking in his focus. Until there's nothing else but the two of them, and he is stuck there, desperately wishing that they had just a little bit more time...

"Holy shit," Cisco's voice breaks Leonard from the moment.

His two halves snap into one and he realizes with sudden abject horror what Cisco has seen.

It's enough.

He looks at Cisco, finds his voice, and seethes _,_ "Get out."

At once, the Oculus evaporates, and Leonard's conscious slams back into S.T.A.R. labs with a fury.

He doesn't know if he grabbed Cisco before or after the vision took them, but he has him now, fists knotted in the front of his t-shirt. He pulls the kid close, until his feet are half dangling off the ground and his eyes are blown with fear and even Leonard isn't sure whether he means to strangle him or not.

 _That's not you anymore._ The words come from nowhere. Isn't he the one who said them?

His mind is burning. Even though the vision has ended, he is still seeing the world through a strange haze of green. Some part of him knows unequivocally that something is wrong, but that part of him is small and quiet and powerless.

And Cisco has been somewhere he shouldn't have.

"Lenny?"

Lisa?

It stops. All at once.

His heart stutters in his chest, and his hands drop from Cisco's shirt like a lead weights.

Leonard only has a moment to realize that the room around him is in shambles. Glass is broken and tables are upturned. Nathaniel is made of steel, Constantine's hands are on fire, and yes, Lisa is there, gaping at him.

Then the void takes him.


	5. Damn Those Snart Genes are Criminal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, sorry for taking so long to update. The past month has been kind of hectic. I had to go back to work and the summer class I'm taking for grad school picked up at the same time (legit churned out a 30 page report on diesel generators last week). Point being, I haven't had that much time to write, but the good news is that I'm still working my way through this. So hope you like it. Starting next chapter, I'm going to be getting into a lot more of the actual Sara/Leonard stuff. 
> 
> Also btw, I have this nagging idea for a 3-4 chapter story where I write Leonard into the Invasion cross-over. So if I decide to pursue that, this story might update even slower. TBD.

John swears to god, the devil, and every sordid creature in between, it's either a tragedy or a damn miracle that he is still sober right now.

More likely, it's a bit of both.

See, the tragedy is that Leonard Snart is waking up. That means in a few minutes John and Team Flash are going to have the regrettable responsibility of explaining this mess to him, and Caitlin Snow has made it very clear that the news is to be delivered "delicately".

"The man came back from the dead twenty-four hours ago after apparently saving all of free-will. The least we can do is try not to set him off," Caitlin hissed at them. Then Harry raised an eyebrow,"...okay, worse than we already have..." And, of course, she'd caught Rory glaring from Leonard's bedside,"...maybe we should be mindful of Heatwave too."

That's about when she'd lost John.

He's not exactly known for his tactful bedside manner, but maybe he could've managed for a pretty face like Snart's. Rory though? Now she's just set them up for failure, and John _always_ prefers to be drunk for failure.

Of course, the miracle is that he pulled through Snart's nuclear meltdown without reaching for the bottle in the first place.

John prides himself on being a real nasty piece of work, and part of the job description is being able to identify other fun, nasty pieces of work. He'd clocked Snart the minute he'd laid eyes on him. Yet somehow, John had been so focused on analyzing the effects Leonard has been having on their dear captain that he'd underestimated the beast of a problem lurking underneath the man's own skin.

And exorcists who underestimate problems don't usually have long life-spans.

Thank the devil for Lisa Snart - who, by the way, is also beautiful, damn those Snart genes _are_ criminal. If she hadn't been there earlier... well John doesn't think they could've taken Leonard by force. At least not before Snart had done whatever he was going to do to poor Cisco.

Leonard had barely touched the boy's hand when a wave of energy had ripped out of him like a storm sent straight from hell. It knocked Barry and Mick clean off their feet, destroying everything that wasn't physically bolted to the ground. The lights had shattered, and in the resulting din, emerald green sparks the exact shade and color of the time-stream illuminated the room. They popped and crackled like water in hot oil, and John learned the hard way that they singed skin if you allowed them too close.

The sheer amount of power Leonard had channeled through his body was absolutely fucking mental. John's never seen anything quite like it, and that's saying something. The real miracle here has nothing to do with John's sobriety. By all means, Leonard Snart should be in a coma right now.

To hell with it, John pulls out his flask and takes a deep, deep swig of gin. It's foul stuff that he'd nicked off a particularly shady Puritan man while they were in Salem. Nothing like an era of sexually repressed magic haters to produce reliable glorified rubbing alcohol. He gives it a good thirty minutes until he's well and toasted.

Better late than never, as they say - Leonard is waking.

"What the hell did you all do to me?"

There's a sudden flurry of movement, as people either start to hover - Barry, Mick, and Lisa - or prep for a medical presentation - Harry, Caitlin and Cisco.

Not Nate and John, of course. They hang in the back of the room like a pair of reject teenagers looking for some excuse to skip class. Leonard may be their teammate now, but everyone else here... well, they're his people. Nate and John don't really have any business inserting themselves into this scene until they're really needed.

The Legends have always been back-row-2.0 kind of people anyhow. John will join the doctor-squad when he can be obnoxious about it.

"Geez man, more like what did he do to us," Nate mutters, rubbing his face.

John smirks at him. He finds Nate's irrational hate for Snart to be rather entertaining.

"Give it a minute, squire."

They watch as Leonard's eyes dart around the room, suspiciously passing over each face before stilling on Lisa's. Then it all seems to come back to him at once. John can tell by the way his chin jerks wildly towards Cisco.

"Ramon!" Leonard says, voice suddenly hostile.

"There it is," John grins to Nate, who just shakes his head in response.

Cisco throws his hands up into the air and takes a reflexive step back, but before he can bumble his way through an explanation, Lisa has a hand on Leonard's shoulder, pushing him back into his seat.

"Lenny please," she says. "Cisco's here to help."

"That what he told you?"

Cisco starts.

"Yo, listen Cold," he says, waving a finger in the air with a fairly impressive amount of bravado. His jaw unhinges to finish his thought, but the words never come. Snart fixes him with an absolutely fiendish glare that seems to douse all of Cisco's courage on the spot. 

"I'm listening," Leonard snipes, tone pure ice. Cisco looks about ready to swallow his own tongue. 

Holy hell, John thanks his lucky stars that he didn't get stuck on that trip to Nanda Parbat with Sara's A-Team. You couldn't pay for this sort of drama entertainment anywhere else.

Cisco is such a bloody liar.

He'd told them all that he'd only seen "the Oculus explosion" in the vision he'd shared with Leonard. But _that_ is not the face of a man who just gained a witness to admire his heroic last-act. John would bet his last cigarette that Cisco is covering for something.

But what? He wants to know, badly.

For a brief moment, everyone in the room seems to hold their breath. Leonard's hostility has caught them all off-guard, and nobody seems to know quite what to do with it. Least of all Cisco, whose being targeted by all that malevolence.

Then, Lisa suddenly thwacks Leonard upside the head with an open palm, and the spell is released.

(Off to the side, Mick lets out a tone deaf guffaw, "You see that? Pay up Red.")

"Listen jerk. Stop that," Lisa rolls on with a fury that erupts from seemingly nowhere. "You just collapsed, and they're..." Her cheeks redden angrily. "They're helping!" she finishes. "Don't you dare be an ass about it."

Leonard falters.

For a brief moment, John thinks Snart is actually going to try and defend himself, but the longer he looks at his sister, the less gumption he seems to have. Actually, more than that, he seems be turning a little pale.

Mm, that's a shame. John definitely could've suckered Nate out of some money if a real fight had broken out.

"Sorry Lis," Leonard grumbles eventually.

"Yeah you better be," she glowers, then spins back towards Team Flash. "Cisco, babe. Go ahead."

Barry, not Cisco, is the one who actually takes point for most of the re-telling. After all, Cisco was in this secret vibe with Leonard, so he missed most of the light show. That being said, Barry sugar coats a lot of it, downplaying all the damage and outright skipping how close Snart had been to actual murder.

Leonard doesn't seem fooled.

By the end of the story, he's half-sagging in his seat, looking thoroughly exhausted though not particularly surprised. He must've been lucid for some portion of it.

"The good news," Caitlin jumps in at the end. "Is that we were able to get a lot of information from this. We have a diagnosis and a treatment plan for you now. You're going to be fine."

Snart nods at them to keep going, triggering a stiff pause that undercuts all of Caitlin's optimism.

"So, bad news next?" Cisco asks, voice still a little squeaky.

John grins, feeling the gin hit him just right. This is exactly his cue for a good caustic entrance. "Oi, give it to him straight," he tells Team Flash, lazily raising his flask. "There is no good news."

Rory's mouth twitches at the comment, and for a brief moment, John thinks the big man might get up and throttle him right then and there.

"Man, _please_ don't make me break up a fight with Mick," Nate whines.

John shoots him an easy wink that promises nothing. Although, Leonard appears to be awake and well enough now to run Rory interference on their behalf.

"News is news," Leonard sighs, waving off Mick with only a subtle hand gesture. "Just get it over with."

Barry, Caitlin and Cisco exchange another worried glance, before Harrison Wells rolls his eyes at all of them.

"You all aren't going to do it? I'll do it," he says irritably, then turns to Snart. " _You_ are a time bomb."

Immediately, Caitlin releases a dismayed groan, and Barry slaps a hand over his face.

"I'm a what now?" Leonard says, voice very low and maybe a bit too calm. Lisa shifts beside him, her hand moving to rest on his shoulder. If anything it seems to make her brother even more tense.

"What Harry _meant_ , is that when the Oculus exploded, you seem to have absorbed a great deal of temporal energy," Caitlin starts to explain, her hands wringing. "The thing is, your DNA hasn't changed. You don't have a meta gene, or any other kind of biological anomalies in your system."

"English Doc?" Mick demands.

"It means he should be dead," Harry offers, throwing one hand into the air. "This very instant, he has almost no business breathing."

"Bed-side manner Harry!"

Lisa's eyes narrow in what is apparently a signature 'Snart' expression. "But he is breathing," she points out dubiously.

"Yeah, yeah. He's fine," Cisco hurries to agree. He takes a step closer to Lisa before he is once again cut off by a sharp look from Leonard. John is immediately amused - is Cisco shagging Leonard's sister? He hopes so.

"We think Snart's acting like a vessel for all this energy," Caitlin continues, biting her lip. "Since his DNA hasn't changed we know he isn't creating it, just storing it, and it looks like certain stressful situations or traumatic memories might trigger him to release it, you know... explosively."

"A time bomb," Leonard mutters, seeming to understand.

"And a ruddy dangerous one at that," John chimes in. "It appears that our dear Zari was right, the energy itself isn't magical, but when you have one of these... attacks... it interacts with other inter-dimensional forces. Ambient magic. That's why Gideon didn't pick anything up when she scanned you earlier. It was blocking her. Magic is sticking to you like gold to a bloody Leprechaun."

"That's bad?"

"Aye mate. If you let too much of that out at once, you could accidentally rip a hole in the fabric of reality... or worse."

Snart hardly reacts to the news. He doesn't even ask what 'or worse' means, which is really such a pity because John does kind of get off on telling others about the various demons that might be drawn to power like this.

Lisa and Mick aren't nearly so calm.

"We came here for you idiots to fix him," Mick growls dangerously. "You saying you can't?"

"The temporal energy he's carrying is finite," Harry sighs. "We could, theoretically, try to drain him, but one misstep and..."

"Kaboom," Cisco explodes his fists in demonstration.

"I was willing to give that a go," Harry says, before Caitlin sends him another long suffering look. "But it will be safer to try to contain it instead," he returns her look with a smirk. "We'll make you a device that will bleed off the energy slowly over time. You wear it for a year, maybe a little longer, and then when the energy is gone, you can get rid of it."

"Plus in case of emergencies, it seems like other people can snap you out of the episodes," Caitlin nods. "Lisa was able to jog you back to yourself earlier."

"And Rory caught you yesterday in the Med-Bay," John agrees, taking another pull from his flask.

"Sara too," Nate adds. "From what she was saying, it sounds like you weren't all there when she found you in Russia."

"Wonder if Palmer wouldn't be totally useless here either."

Leonard clearly doesn't find that amusing.

"If you all sick Raymond on me, I'm not responsible for what happens to him."

"You're a literal bomb mate," John scoffs, ignoring the way Nate's fists are suddenly clenched. "We'll sick whoever we bloody well please on you if it keeps the time ship from blowing up."

Leonard frowns.

Apparently, he doesn't have anything particularly witty to say to that.

They let the news settle for a few minutes, while Lisa pesters Team Flash with a few more questions about Leonard's long-term health. Caitlin reassures her that barring more acts of sacrificial heroism - a comment that makes Leonard scowl- her brother is now back for good.

As the conversation makes another turn towards Leonard's temporal energy suppression device, Nate's shoulder bumps into John.

"What's got you looking suddenly all cheery-like?" John asks as he empties the last of the gin.

"Oh nothing," Nate grins. "Just, you know. You're kind of our expert on all this now, right?"

"I'd say I'm really more of an... adjacent expert," John replies suspiciously. "My great wealth of knowledge only goes as far as the dark arts are involved."

"Dude, all I'm saying is that somebody's going to have to explain all this to Sara when we get back, and you are totally going to do all the work," Nate shrugs.

John blinks at him as that sinks in.

"Bloody hell," he curses. "You noticed it too then?"

"Well yeah. It's kinda hard to miss."

John can only shake his head. "There's a betting pool if you're interested," he offers.

He's going to need a damn refill on his gin.

* * *

Eventually, this day is going to have to end. That's the thought that drives Leonard through the next hour or two at S.T.A.R. labs.

By the time Team Flash finishes explaining to him that he is a literal living, breathing time-bomb, Leonard is done.

He's done with the vile mix of hero-worship and pity that Team Flash can't seem to keep off their faces. He's done with the way his stomach twists every time Mick and Lisa glance to check he hasn't vanished yet. And he's more than done with this whole idea that he's not in control of himself.

Even when he was at his worst, going on crime sprees - shooting security guards, truck drivers, and even sometimes members of his own crew - at least Leonard has always been in control. He's always meant it. Not once has he woken up dazed and confused with a gun in his hands or blood caked on his fists.

Lewis used to hurt people like that, when he was stupid drunk and couldn't tell his left from his right.

And above all else, Leonard must be better than Lewis.

The concern is bad enough that he almost tells them he's not going back.

Loathe as he is to admit it, John Constantine has a point. It's a dumb fucking move to bring a bomb aboard a time ship. It'd be safer for him to hide out alone for a while, in some place where he couldn't hurt one of the few people he actually gives a damn about. If Sara or Mick had a problem with it, they could even time skip a year ahead and pick him up after the whole danger-to-yourself-and-others nonsense had blown over.

Except, apparently that's risky too.

According to Caitlin, the best thing for him to do now is to stick to his people like glue. If he has an episode alone in a safe-house, there's no guarantee he won't accidentally kill himself, but if Mick, Lisa, Sara, or (apparently) Raymond is around, they can stop it before it gets too out of hand.

Or so everybody seems to think.

He hates that this is actually a bit of a relief.

As much as he should fall off the map, the thought of actually doing so makes his stomach churn. Just this morning he was livid they benched him for one mission. The thought of spending a whole year away from the team, all the while knowing some psychopath is out there personally hunting down Sara...

Ha! Already, it doesn't feel like a real option. God, he's such a selfish bastard.

Of course, Lisa, meanwhile, is another matter entirely.

They dance around the issue at first, as Lisa gives him a highlight reel of everything he's missed in her life these last two years - most of it revolves around terrorizing Central City's underground as a newly-minted bartender at Saints and Sinners.

Eventually though, she won't let him avoid the elephant in the room any longer.

"I'm coming with you," she informs him when she's finished being pleasant.

Leonard hardly misses a beat.

"No," he replies impassively.

She glares at him - an unstoppable force suddenly confronted with an immovable wall. Two Snarts bleeding off infinite reserves of stubbornness.

"You don't get to say no. You have been dead for two years, Lenny. Two years! You left to go board a time-ship without leaving so much as a note, and then you died! If they say it's going to help for you to be around family, then I'm coming. End of discussion."

"What discussion? You're not coming Lisa," Leonard repeats, harsher this time. "Mick will be with me. I'll be fine."

"Fine like you were last time, right?"

She says it like a dare.

 _Fight with me Lenny,_ she's thinking. _Fight with me so I can throw every decision you've ever made in your face. You'll feel so guilty, you'll have no choice but to let me win._

Leonard stares unflinchingly into her sharp, sickly-sweet gaze, and for a moment, he can almost taste his own blood on his tongue.

No, he won't engage her here. She can go ahead and throw ten temper-tantrums for all he cares.

Things are just different when it comes to Lisa. It's one thing to put Mick, the team, even Sara at risk by afflicting them with his presence, but he won't do that to his sister. If she were around and he hurt her, he'd never be able to look in the mirror again without seeing his father.

And above all else, Leonard must be better than Lewis.

"Such a _pity,_ " - his drawl lingers on the words, so she can tell exactly how disingenuous he's being - "You don't have keys to the jump ship." Then he breaks eye contact to study a bit of dirt caught under one of his fingernails.

Oh, he thinks Lisa might slap him this time. She's wearing a hateful look that says she'd cuff her own wrist to his, if she didn't know he'd have the lock picked in a fraction of a second.

"Cisco baby," she trills out suddenly. "Be a dear and tell Lenny about those inter-dimensional portals you can make."

Across the room, Cisco freezes, and Leonard's eyes narrow shrewdly in his direction.

He's aware that his sister has had a sort of on-again-off-again thing with Cisco Ramon. He's just never thought much of it because he's always been sure that Lisa would cannibalize Cisco one day for breakfast, like some kind of praying mantis or maybe a black widow. Shame on him for assuming she'd already done so while he'd been away. The last thing he needs today is one more reason to murder Cisco.

"Lisa, babe," Cisco imitates her tone with a nervous laugh. "I really don't think that's a good idea." He wags his head in Leonard's direction - the absolute death of subtlety.

"Don't be silly," she waves him off impatiently.

Cisco's swallow is nearly audible from across the room. "You know, I'm really more Night Crawler than Kitty Pryde," he insists.

"But between you and the Flash, I'm sure we could get by," Lisa smiles easy poison. Then comes the kicker. "You'd do it right? For me?"

Leonard has had quite enough of this. "Did you know that dead superheroes can't time-travel?" he reminds them all casually, fixing the full force of his cold gaze on Barry Allen - the only one that he knows isn't emotionally compromised here.

Even Lisa has to pause to gauge how serious he is. Leonard has tried killing Barry one too many times for them not to take his death threats seriously, and if he's proven anything to them these past few years, it's that the word 'drastic' might as well be meaningless when it comes to protecting his sister.

Cisco and Barry are still gaping at him like two blubbering fish when Mick decides to put everyone out of their misery.

"Fuck off. Both of you," he slams his book on the table. "Lisa! You're not coming."

Leonard's eyes flicker over to Mick in surprise.

He's used to Mick blurting out violent declarations of intent, but suddenly his words seem to carry a sort of authority that Mick's never had before. The kind that doesn't come from everyone else in the room fearing a fiery retribution. When Mick tells Lisa no, it feels like a decision, and nobody really questions that.

Later, Leonard might carve out some time for an existential crisis over his new place in the world next to a decision-making-Mick. For now though, he's just grateful somebody has put an end to this ridiculous argument he's having with Lisa.

"You're siding with him?" she asks incredulously.

"Oh, you want to fight with me about it?" Mick raises his eyebrows at her with just a hint of the old sadistic amusement. "You show up, and Snart's just gonna leave, so instead you're not gonna to show up. Saves us all some time hunting the bastard down before he gets himself killed again."

It's all very matter-of-fact, and the logic is hard to argue with.

Lisa's gaze wheels back to Leonard, and he can see the disbelief there, the sort of audacious ' _you wouldn't'._ Something in his languid expression must confirm Lisa's worst fears however, because after a moment she finally deflates.

Any other week, he'd be smirking his ass off at the victory, but today he's just left feeling rather empty. The resentful dejected look she's suddenly wearing is infinitely worse than the combative one from a second ago.

Unfortunately, this was a necessary evil.

"Ah, the professor had this thingy," Mick adds as an after-thought. "Could talk to his daughter everyday no matter where we were in the timeline. Had video shit and everything..."

"We'll get you one of those," Leonard jumps on the bone. "You can check up on me all you like."

A stiff pause stretches between them before Lisa lets out a dramatic sigh. "You are going to owe me for the rest of eternity for this," she informs him.

Leonard releases a breath that he hadn't realized he'd been holding. By some miracle, she's apparently not going to hold a grudge.

"I'll nab you something impressive for your birthday," he promises.

"You better come home for my birthday."

Leonard sighs. It's a deep thing that he feels at the very core of his being. At some point this day is going to have to end, he reminds himself one last time before giving her a soft nod.

"Sure, that too," he agrees.

* * *

The beauty of time travel is that they don't have to wait around for Team Flash to make this temporal energy device. All they have to do is hop into the jump ship, skip a week ahead, and voila they can go home.

Leonard and Mick run into S.T.A.R. labs alone for the pick up.

"I think this might be some of my best work, if I do say so myself," Cisco grins at them, as he hands Leonard a thick silver ring with a blue studded gemstone in the middle. "Nobody will ever know it's more than a sweet fashion statement."

Leonard inspects it with feigned disinterest. "It's alright," he allows. Then slips it onto his left thumb.

Almost immediately, he feels a sudden tightness in his chest, like he's strapped a belt taut around his ribcage. It's not an entirely unpleasant sensation. He certainly likes the sense of control that comes with it. For the first time, he thinks he can parse out the temporal energy as it thrums through his veins. He knows, of course, that it was always there, but now it's something other. A foreign entity, not apart of himself.

The way the stone glows faintly as it dissipates the energy isn't ideal, but he supposes this will be an excuse for the gratuitous use of gloves on future missions.

"We done here?" Mick asks when Leonard finishes examining the thing.

"Mind if I have a word with Cisco before we go," Leonard drawls casually, tilting his head towards his partner.

Mick squints at him before coalescing. "I'm eating something," he announces, then stalks out of the room.

Cisco shifts uncomfortably the moment Mick is gone. "This is the part where you thank me profusely for all my help, right?" Cisco says with a nervous laugh.

"Not much of a thank you kind of guy."

"Of course not," Cisco half-mutters. "You're Captain Cold, what was I thinking?"

The sarcasm is a little rich, and Leonard lets Cisco sweat it out for another moment before getting to the point.

"You didn't tell them," he says, careful to keep his tone nonchalant, like he's just passing a comment about the weather.

Cisco mercifully doesn't ask him what he's talking about.

"Well yeah," he nods, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. "It's not really any of my business, and trust me you made it _pretty_ clear that you didn't want anyone to know."

Leonard studies Cisco, not quite sure how to handle this predicament. He'd come into the room with quite a few creative threats ready on his lips. When Cisco had invaded his vision, it had felt like his world was ending. Like some sort of terrible awful thing had come to pass.

Except, now the kid is acting like it's no big deal. And if he hasn't told anybody, then maybe all the violence isn't actually necessary...

"Can I say something?" Cisco asks.

"I suppose I'm not stopping you," Leonard replies with blatant disdain.

"Listen dude, you're not my favorite person. Barry's totally forgiven you for all the crap you put us through a few years ago, but he wasn't in the room when you almost froze my brother's hands off or when you tied Caitlin up on top of a bomb."

"You've been sleeping with my sister, Cisco," Leonard hedges. "Must not be carrying too big a grudge."

"My point," Cisco's cheeks flush. "Is that however much of a douchebag I think you are, you must've done something right for Sara freaking Lance to look at you like _that_."

Leonard scoffs. "Please, save me the Romantic Comedy nonsense."

"Oh no, I'm serious," Cisco shakes his head. "Although for your information, Rom-Coms are a seriously underrated movie genre."

Leonard rewards that comment with a long burning look. He's not entirely sure how he's ended up here - talking to Cisco Ramon, of all people, about his love life, but he wants out.

"Just keep it to yourself Ramon," Leonard warns him tiredly. "If I have to have this conversation with Barry Allen the next time I see you people, we're going to have a problem. Capisce?"

Cisco nods, although he seems a little skeptical.

Leonard takes that as his cue to leave. "Always a pleasure," he clips sarcastically and he uncurls from the wall he's been leaning against.

"Oh it's something like that," Cisco mutters underneath his breath.

Leonard ignores him and stalks off to go find Mick. 

* * *

True to form, his partner is in Team Flash's break room raiding their refrigerator. He grunts when he sees Leonard enter the room.

"You tell him we'll burn him alive if he hurts Lisa?" Mick asks through a mouthful of PB&J.

Leonard pauses.

Maybe Cisco's absurd pep-talk has gotten to him somehow, or maybe he's just lost his whole damn mind. Either way, he proceeds to do something absolutely ridiculous.

He tells the truth.

"Actually no," he says, twisting his new ring around his finger. Mick waits expectantly for Leonard to elaborate. It takes a few seconds to get out, and he can't look Mick in the eye while he does it, but he manages. "The Oculus... she... she kissed me. He saw."

Mick blinks, then busts out into a wide shit-eating grin. "You almost iced him for that?" he asks.

"Yeah I did," Leonard says, showing no hints of remorse. "Don't make me regret telling you."

"Sure Snart," Mick agrees, though Leonard is positive he doesn't mean it.

It's not like this is really news to his partner - the man was goading him about it in front of a room full of people just a few hours ago.

They've never spoken about it, but Mick's known about his ... _feelings_ for Sara for a long time now. Since Mick almost shot her, and Leonard (inadvertently) left him to rot in a field for it. Two years ago, it might have even been a sore spot for the two of them. Now apparently, it's just a source of amusement.

"You gonna say something about it now? Not like you don't know how she feels."

Leonard scoffs. "I knew how she felt, that's different," he tries but Mick clearly is not willing to allow that excuse the time of day. " _Fine_. We did sort of talk about it over cards last night. She said she needs time to... readjust."

Mick nods, as if that actually makes a lot of sense to him. "She missed you," he says, suddenly very serious. "Not my business, but... she missed you."

Well... what the hell does that mean?

"Since when do _you_ care about boundaries?" Leonard demands. He swears, in the thirty odd years he's known Mick, the only people he's ever seen him keep a secret from is the freaking police.

"Can't explain it," Mick shrugs. "It's just Blondie. She's been different since we beat Savage. You'll see."

Leonard's lips curl into a deep frown.

Different? Different how? He supposes maybe he's seen a glimpse of it. Sara has seemed rather on edge having him back, but he hasn't chalked it up too much. After all, it's not like Mick has been much better.

"Give it a week Snart," Mick insists again. "Pretty boy and the rest of them didn't know her before, but you did. You'll know."

"If you say," Leonard mutters skeptically.

Suddenly, he's anxious to get back to the jump-ship. Today's been more than exhausting, and all this talk of Sara has reminded him that she's been off playing covert operative in Nanda Parbat with Raymond. He thinks he'll feel better when he can see she's safe again.

Whether she's as 'different' as Mick says she is... well, he'll be the judge of that.


	6. Care to Share About the Arm?

The wait for the rest of the team to return to the Waverider is maddening, and if Sara has to sit still for another minute of it, she's going to go insane.

"Wait! Sara! Where are you going?" Ray yelps, as she abruptly leaps out of her chair in the Captain's office.

"The training room," she answers. "You don't have to follow me."

Of course, Ray doesn't give up chase, and the persistent sound of shuffling feet follows her around the next corner.

"But we agreed to wait together!" he protests.

Oh _sure_ they did.

At Ray's vehement insistence. He pressed the issue harder than he had the last team-bonding sports night.

(An event that, shocker-shocker, had ended with a broken trash compactor and three black eyes).

Sara is almost positive his wheedling was entirely for her benefit - a theory supported by Zari's suspicious lack of complaining when Ray asked her to join. The team has this obnoxious habit of babying her every time she runs into Damien Dahrk, like they're constantly wondering which encounter will be the one that finally makes her snap.

And that was before this whole Leonard situation.

To be fair, Sara didn't mind humoring him at first. Despite how annoying Ray could be, she doesn't actually want to worry him.

Except... that was hours ago. He just had them sitting there talking cheerfully about nothing, for _hours_.

Eventually, Zari had excused herself to go work on Gideon's magic-sensing algorithm (which must be broken since it hardly registered Damien's presence in Nada Parbat as a disturbance), and Sara just couldn't take it anymore.

"Yeah well, I need to hit something," she tells him.

"Ms. Lance, I must strongly advise against that," Gideon cuts in, sounding fairly exasperated. "Your fractured ulna will not be set for another six hours and twenty four minutes, and further stress to your injuries could significantly set-back your recovery."

"We used to do one-handed combat training all the time with the League, Gideon. I promise I'll lay off it."

It's not like Sara would be able to move her bad arm much anyway, even if she wanted to. Gideon put it in a sling the minute they'd finished juicing her with the good future bone-regrowing drugs. Sara hazards it's meant more as a reverse placebo than anything else.

Ray, apparently, isn't the only one on this ship that doesn't seem to trust her ability to take care of herself.

"Sara, if Gideon says you need to rest, then you should rest," Ray insists.

Sara spares him a glance as she finally arrives in the Waverider's little make-shift gym. Suddenly, she no longer has to imagine the critical pursed-lipped expression that Gideon would be wearing if she had a body, because there it is, come to life on his face.

Well, if that's the way he wants to be about it...

"Ray, you really want to help me?" Sara asks.

He has to know this is a trap, but of course this is Ray Palmer she's talking to. His compulsive need to be helpful will trump his common sense every time.

"Of course," he assures her, true to form.

"Then take this."

She steps back to the weapons rack and throws a bo staff towards him, then picks a shorter one-handed baton for herself.

Ray balks.

"You're injured! I can't fight you like this. What if your arm get's banged up worse?!"

"Please. You couldn't take me even if I had both hands tied behind my back," Sara says, amused.

It's light banter, but at the same time, it's not.

Can't Ray see that she needs this?

Sara's skin itches from all the horrible idleness that he'd inflicted upon her. Her muscles are tense, and her mind won't stand still, and there is an unsettling knot of _something_ tightening in her chest that's starting to become difficult to ignore.

If she doesn't get this energy out soon _,_ everyone is going to regret it.

"Sara, I really don't know about this..."

Ray is still hesitating. He's holding the bo staff with limp fingers and staring at the weapon like its offended him.

"Don't spar with me then," Sara shrugs. She's too pent-up to wait for him to mull this over. Her eyes wander longingly towards her usual stress-reliever. "Think I can do the salmon ladder with one hand?"

"Please don't do that," Ray begs immediately, voice squeaky. "You know, maybe sparring is a good idea after all. I mean, I can even make sure to go easy on your arm. That shouldn't be too bad, right Gideon?"

There's a long pause. "Risk of further injury would be smaller than with the salmon ladder Mr. Palmer," she eventually allows.

Sara grins something sharp.

"Well, can't argue with that."

* * *

To his credit, Ray takes the beat-down that follows like a champ.

He doesn't utter a single word of complaint. Not even as Sara proceeds to splay him out on the mat again, and again, and again.

She doesn't know how long the two of them go at it. Certainly long enough for her to loose count of how many wins she's racked up. By the time they're finally interrupted, her muscles are humming contentedly with that sweet post-workout feeling, and Ray looks ready to melt into a puddle on the floor.

"Oh, looks like we missed a real party."

Sara spins around to see John Constantine smirking gleefully in the doorway with the rest of the boys close in tow.

Nate pushes his way through the second he sees that Ray is on the floor. "Dude, what'd you do to piss off Sara?" he asks with a grin, offering him a hand up.

Ray takes it. "Oh nothing," he wheezes. "We were just getting the good ole' blood pumping."

If possible, Mick looks even more entertained than John. "Really Haircut? 'Cause Blondie barely broke a sweat," he chortles.

"Did you at least get one or two good swings in, buddy?"

"You know, I don't think we were really keeping track," Ray replies, effectively answering the question.

Sara should be grinning at them. She should be teasing Ray more about his form or taunting Nate and Mick to see if she can convince them to take a turn, but she doesn't do any of these things.

It's hard to focus on the jeering when Leonard is staring at her.

He hasn't stepped into the room like the rest of them, instead choosing to stop in the threshold and lean against the doorframe, hip out and arms crossed, gaze piercing. He doesn't seem to find Ray's general state of distress even the slightest bit amusing. Which, coming from him, is rather foreboding.

Sara holds his gaze, stubbornly undaunted by the scrutiny, despite the way his attitude starts to bleed into her own body language.

She doesn't dare let him know it, but seeing Leonard, it's like the Russian hospital all over again. His very presence knocks the wind out of her, even as the suffocating knot in her chest mercifully loosens.

Sara hadn't even realized he had been the cause of it...

Eventually he tilts his head back and gives her one final painfully obvious once over, like he's sizing her up... or checking her out.

She's honestly not sure which.

"Your arm is broken," he says evenly. 

Sara rolls her eyes.

"Yeah, and you're not riddled with bullet holes."

Leonard shrugs, and the sheer amount of 'flippant' he fits into the little gesture is quite impressive.

"Don't worry Captain, it's not for lack of trying," he tells her.

Oh, Sara's not a fan of that.

Her eyes narrow shrewdly at him as her fingers twitch agitated, against her baton.

Hadn't he gotten the message last night? Morbid jokes about death and dying are off-limits for the time being.

Something must have happened in Central City. Why else would he suddenly be acting like an ass?

She's about to ask him as much when Nate clears his throat, interrupting them.

"Hey where's Zari?"

"Oh," Ray perks up. "She's in the lab working on some of Gideon's algorithms."

"Cool, well I'm going to go find her. Want to come?"

"We probably should have a meeting with the whole team to debrief everyone, don't you think?" Ray frowns.

Nate shares some sort of look with John and shakes his head. "Well if we're with Zari and they're with Sara, everyone can get all the information, and, uh, this way Zari can keep working," he says reasonably. "Come on buddy."

Ray looks like he wants to dig in his heels, but then Mick joins in. He slaps a hand forcefully onto Ray's shoulder, making him wince.

"I'm coming too, Haircut," he says, then throws Sara a wicked grin. "Blondie, you're on Snart duty."

Leonard's gaze whips towards Mick and turns briefly malignant, not that their resident arsonist seems to care.

If Sara wasn't suspicious before, she certainly is now.

It's possible Mick might be joking about the "Rory Duty" pie slice on the chore wheel, but she doubts it. Leonard would hardly be so peeved over a good one-liner.

John is the only person, other than Leonard, who lingers behind as the others file out. He catches her eye and winks as he digs through his pocket for his lighter. It's not lost on Sara that he's swaying a little on his feet. Probably drunk.

Oh, she's got a bad feeling about this.

"What happened?" Sara demands the moment they others are finally gone.

John grins, a cigarette lolling in his mouth, and leans towards her conspiratorially. "So glad you asked, love," he starts.

Then Leonard promptly cuts him off.

"You know," he says, drawl thick. "How about you go first? Care to share about the arm? Or maybe what's got you beating the snot out of poor Raymond."

John's mouth snaps shut, and he hits Sara with a sloppy too-pleased smirk that makes it abundantly clear she's on her own with this one.

Good lord.

It's never occurred to Sara that she might one day be sandwiched in a room between drunk-John and moody-Leonard, but perhaps this is her new worst nightmare. Later, she's going to ream Nate a new one for allowing this to happen, but right now, she's going to glare daggers into Leonard.

He's looking at her like he can read her, like he might possibly have an idea of what they'd run into today.

Like hell could he know.

"Alright, sure," she agrees slowly. Her tone dances along a knife's edge. "Damien Darhk was stealing herbal drugs from the League, and I broke my arm when I tried to free his head from his shoulders."

It has the desired effect.

Leonard's entire body goes completely and utterly still, and John's cigarette drops from his mouth.

"Bloody hell, Sara," John curses. "How long'd you last before he had you three strung up on the ceiling?"

Her knuckles turn white against her baton.

"It was just me. Zari was quarterbacking and Ray was miniaturized... but not long enough," she grouses bitterly.

Another string of colorful expletives leaves John's mouth, and Sara finds herself looking at Leonard again.

He's still barely moved a muscle. Although, the tension in his frame is decidedly worse than before, and there's a hard spark in his eyes that reminds her viscerally of the moment he had pulled the Cold Gun on her.

"You going to say something, _Leonard_?"

She kind of wants him to.

Maybe that training session with Ray wasn't enough, because Sara is suddenly itching for this fight almost as much as the last.

This is what Leonard is for, right? Arraigning the Captain for all her stupid, dumbass decisions. He's going to tell her what nobody else on this ship has the balls to say. That she can't handle Damien Darhk. That she's only breathing right now because the bastard _allowed_ her to come home today.

And Sara will tell him to fuck off.

Because if she can't kill him, then what in the world are they going to do?

She's so wound up prepping counter-fire that she doesn't notice it when Leonard abruptly closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and deflates.

"I'm a bomb."

Now it's Sara's turn to freeze. That wasn't a nasty comment about Darhk.

"What?"

Leonard looks down at his hands again. No, at the shiny new ring around his thumb. There's not an ounce of Captain Cold left in him.

"I said I'm a bomb, apparently," he repeats himself. "That's what Barry and the Flashlings had to say."

Damien Dahrk suddenly doesn't matter.

"I want it from the beginning," she says, looking once again towards John.

"Course love," he mutters.

Leonard is mostly silent for the explanation, but she can feel him watching her again, gauging her reaction. She tries her best to stay neutral through most of it; although, she thinks he knows what her sticking point is going to be.

"So, to be clear, the visions," she starts slowly, once John has finished the story. "All of them are of... the Oculus."

Leonard gives her a dry smirk.

"Yep."

"And Cisco saw the... Oculus ... in one of his vibes."

"Yep."

"And how many times do you think you've seen the Oculus since, you know, it actually happened?"

"Well, can't say I've been right in the head for the past year or so," he sighs. "But I think it's fair to assume that it's been playing on loop, repeat pretty much the entire time." A pause. "That a problem?"

What a question.

"I don't know Leonard," Sara breathes.

And she doesn't.

She can't imagine a world where she's forced to relive that kiss over and over again. Because, whatever else it was, that was her last memory of him. One last cruel almost before he was gone and all she was left with was her grief.

"Peachy," Leonard mutters.

Sara frowns, feeling slightly overwhelmed by the situation.

He's putting up walls. She knows he is, but she doesn't know how to stop him either.

What does he want her to do, crack herself open for him on command? 

She's been dancing on a cliff's edge for months now. Has been ever since she'd lost her father, and she knows all too well that if she trips and falls into the abyss, it's going to be hell to climb back out again. If she can even do it at all. The team just can't afford her to break like that right now, and this...

Well this is just a lot for her to take in.

"Darhk doesn't know about you," she says, reaching for the only safe straw she has left to play. "You're not his plant."

Both Leonard and John startle at that.

"What? Did you bat your pretty eyes at him and ask nicely?" John asks in disbelief.

"Something like that," Sara's lips quirk. "He didn't appreciated it much."

Leonard slumps his shoulders and lets out a breath. "Sara -" he starts, but she won't hear it.

"Can it, Snart. It was worth it a thousand times over."

He wipes a flustered hand over his jaw, looking even more miserable than he had a second ago. Still, his walls have halted in their construction, and for now that's good enough for Sara.

"It'll only last until we run into him again," John warns. "The bloke knows Snart's supposed to be dead from when you lot tangled with the Legion. Sara love, if you pissed in his boots... "

"Then I'll be happy to have a nice word with the man," Leonard says sharply. His gaze frosts over into pure ice. "I haven't shot anybody in a year and a half. I think I'm overdue."

Sara feels her breath stick in her throat.

The thought of him sauntering up to have a "nice word" with Damien Dahrk is actually terrifying. She imagines every version of that scenario ends with her holding Leonard's dead body.

"If today proved anything, it's that nobody's going to have anymore 'nice words' with Damien Dahrk, okay?" she says tersely. "The next time he catches us, it's got to be all of us."

Leonard raises an unimpressed eyebrow at her and his eyes slide down to her broken arm for what now feels like the billionth time today.

"What, you're the only one allowed to play Rambo?" he asks sarcastically.

Ah. _There's_ the snide comment about Dahrk. Lucky for him, Sara's lost her fighting spirit for the time being.

"No more Rambo. For anyone," she says tiredly.

Leonard lifts one shoulder in a half shrug.

"Well, if those are Captain's orders," he says pointedly. "Guess we best all follow them."

* * *

Gary loves his job with the Time Bureau

Like really, really loves it.

He's never had a job where he's felt so fulfilled before. People respect him at the Bureau, and they're doing good, important work. Even better, he's Director Sharpe's right hand man. Her go-to guy.

Gary: the man, the myth, the honorary Legend.

It's that very same stellar reputation that led Director Sharpe to assign him a super-duper important mission today. Something she said she wouldn't dare trust to anybody else.

Him. Gary. Hand-selected.

Straightening his back and smoothing out his suit, Gary presses a few buttons on his Time Courier.

"Hello Waverider, here I come," he grins to himself as a portal opens in front of him.

The bridge of the time-ship is notably empty when he steps through it. There's no sound coming from the Captain's Office television, and no voices carrying through the halls. A quick glance at the clock, however, reveals that ship time is 10:42 pm.

Probably a little late to be making a house call. Whoops.

Maybe his time courier wasn't calibrated right before he left...

Well, it's no matter.

The Legends are regular ruffians. Surely somebody will still be awake, even at this hour.

Gary starts to make his way down the hall to the right. A quick loop around the ship won't hurt anybody, he reasons. If all the common spaces are empty, then he'll just head back to the Bureau and come back later. The Legends will be none the wiser.

He makes it past the Galley and the Training Room - both of which are empty - before he starts to hear muffled voices drifting from the Laboratory.

Gary hurries towards the noise, and the words start to become discernible as he gets closer.

"Okay Grumpy Cat," says a sarcastic female voice... definitely Zari. "Who are you and what have you done with Nate?"

There's a loud drawn out groan.

"Come on, I can't be the only one here whose getting bad vibes," Nate answers. His voice is hard and unhappy. Entirely unlike what Gary is used to hearing from the Legend's Man of Steel. "It's not like he's being subtle about it. The dude literally almost killed Cisco twice today. Not to mention he was threatening Barry..."

Gary freezes a few feet from the open doorway, not quite sure what he's stumbled upon. This conversation sounds pretty serious, and he's suddenly unsure whether he'll be a welcome intrusion.

"Don't say that," Ray's exasperated voice joins the fray. "Believe me, I know he's kind of an acquired taste, but he's good. He saved us. It should've been me that day you know. I was holding down the switch first."

Oh man, Gary's eavesdropping now, isn't he?

He should force himself to move. Either enter the room, or beat a hasty retreat back to the Time Bureau. Lurking in the hallway for much longer is definitely, absolutely, totally a bad idea...

"Excuse me if I don't give the guy a gold medal," Nate huffs. "He was barking today that he only did it for Mick..."

"Oi, I wouldn't die for anybody but myself. The bloke's already got a leg up on me," says John in his unmistakeable accent. "Anyways, what'd you toss in with the betting pool for if you want to see Snart's body rotting in a gutter?"

"Betting pool?" Ray asks.

At the same time Zari mutters, "So glad you care, John."

"Hey, just because I see it, doesn't mean I like it," Nate replies to the original question.

Gary isn't paying attention to whatever is said next.

He's been thoroughly distracted by the name Constantine had mentioned.

Snart... Snart... Where has he heard that name before?

Suddenly it hits him, and Gary gasps. His hand flies up to cover his mouth as an afterthought, hopefully stifling the noise.

Leonard Snart. That's who they're talking about! Gary's read about him before when Director Sharpe had him running background checks on the Legends. Snart was in Mick Rory's personal file, listed as a former criminal associate.

Wasn't he supposed to be dead?

There's no time to dwell on the revelation. Apparently, the Legends had heard him after all, because Gary has barely put two and two together when Nate and Zari burst into the hallway - steeled up, wind churning, and ready for a fight.

Uh oh.

"Hi guys," Gary squeaks, hunching his shoulders in an effort to become a small target.

They blink at him in shock.

"Gary!" Zari breathes, lowering her hand from her necklace.

Nate de-steels, and looks back into the room. "False alarm guys," he says.

Ray and John appear behind them a moment later, looking equal parts relieved and flustered to find Gary standing there red-handed. Thankfully, it appears to only be the four of them. Sara and Mick, the scariest two Legends (and the two most likely to get violent), must be off somewhere else on the ship.

"How long have you been standing out here?" Zari asks angrily.

Gary swallows hard. "Not that long," he swears.

"Were you eavesdropping? Not cool dude," Nate huffs.

"No... well yes, but it was an accident. I promise! I'm here on official Bureau business. There must have been a mis-calibration in my time courier because it's kind of late and you all just seemed so serious, and I didn't want to interrupt. Please don't be mad at me."

Gary closes his eyes and braces himself for anger.

Instead Ray sighs. "Come on guys, he says he didn't mean it," says Gary's new favorite Legend.

Nate and Zari hardly look convinced, but John is suddenly grinning.

"Yeah relax you lot," he says, slinging two arms around their shoulders. "This brave man donated us a nipple recently. I'm sure we can come to some kind of understanding."

"Of course. Definitely. I love understandings," Gary agrees quickly.

"Why don't you come in and have a seat, mate. Tell us all about what you've heard," John nods.

He drops his arms from Nate and Zari and leads them all back into the Laboratory. A few minutes later, Gary finds himself sitting in a comfortable roller chair while Ray presses a mug of hot tea into his hands.

"Alright, let's hear it," Zari prompts him.

Now that Gary's nerves have been set at ease, it's easy to jump right into his explanation.

"Well Director Sharpe sent me to come check up on you guys because we haven't gotten any mission reports recently," Gary starts.

He's interrupted almost immediately.

"Ava didn't just give us a call about that?" Nate says with a frown.

"Lovely Sharpe is avoiding the Captain," John smirks in explanation.

Gary opens his mouth, knowing that Director Sharpe wouldn't be happy about that kind of insinuation, but he never gets the thought out.

"The mission reports are my fault, not Sara's," Ray says guiltily. "I usually help her with them, but we've just been so busy lately..."

"Let him finish guys," Zari shushes the boys. "Cut to the eavesdropping part Gary. What'd you hear."

Gary hesitates for half-a second, then rips the bandaid off.

"Why were you guys talking about Leonard Snart? Isn't he dead?"

A chorus of groans answer him, which really does nothing to answer his question.

"Is it a secret?" Nate sighs.

"Not anymore," Zari gestures towards Gary.

"I think maybe we should go get Sara -" Ray starts.

Three very loud, fervent no's nix that idea.

Gary quietly sips at his tea while the Legends proceed to bicker for a few minutes. Several thoughts are discussed, thrown out, and then revisited again; however, the most popular three options seem to be memory flashing him, calling in Mick, and fessing up.

Gary, obviously, prays they choose the last one. 

Eventually, John clears his throat and turns back to him.

"We're going to let you in on something here, but we need you to keep it to yourself for a bit. Can you do that for me, Gary?" he asks.

Gary clutches his mug of tea closer to his chest. "You mean keep it from Director Sharpe?" he blinks owlishly back at John.

"Yes well, not forever. Just for a little while, yeah?"

Gary frowns. Maybe it would be better for them to memory flash him after all. He's very bad at keeping secrets, but even if he could, Director Sharpe will be furious with him if she finds out he's been hiding things from her on behalf of the Legends. She trusted him, after all, with the very important job of checking up on them today.

"How long is a little while?"

The four of them exchange a few looks.

"Not long at all," Ray answers. "Sara was probably going to draft a notice for the Bureau any day now. It's not _really_ a secret."

"Definitely," Nate agrees. "My Dad's still auditing you guys, right? He likes these things to come through official communications. We're just looking out."

Gary nods slowly. He still feels a little uneasy about all this, but if it's going to make things go smoother with Mr. Heywood, then Ava would hardly be able to fault him for that...

"Well, then I guess I can keep a secret for a little while," he decides skeptically.

"Good man," John grins, clapping a hand on his shoulder.

Over the next ten minutes, the four of them proceed to explain to Gary that Leonard Snart used to be one of the original Legends, and that he's recently come back from the dead. In fact, right this instant, he's just down the hall, sharing a bunk with Mick and sleeping off what has apparently been a very long day.

Gary, unfortunately, is not nearly as clueless as people always assume.

He's read Leonard Snart's Bureau file, so it's pretty easy to read between the lines. If Leonard Snart is on the ship, then technically the Legends are harboring a convicted felon with an active warrant out against him.

And they want Gary to keep it a secret from Director Sharpe.

Oh man. What is he going to do?


End file.
